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THE WORKS OF 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

MEMORIAL EDITION 



PBEPARED UNDER THE AUSPICES OP 

THE ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION 
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VOLUME II 



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THE 
WILDERNESS HUNTER 

AN ACCOUNT OF THE BIG GAME OF THE UNITED STATES 
AND ITS CHASE WITH HORSE, HOUND, AND RIFLE 



BY 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 




NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
MCMXXIII 



The Wilderness Hdnter is included in this edition by 
special arrangement with G. P. Putnam's Sons 



Copyright, 1893, by G. P. Putnam's Sons 
Copyright, 1923, by Charles Scribner's Sons 



PrinUd in the United States of America 




NOV 22 73 



©ciA76r,164 



CONTENTS 

VOLUME II 

PAGE 

Roosevelt and the Pioneer Spirit 

STEWART EDWARD WHITE ix 

The Wilderness Hunter 1 



ROOSEVELT AND THE PIONEER SPIRIT 

By Stewart Edward White 



Under casual inspection the pioneer spirit seems to 
be a product of time and circumstance rather than a 
thing in itself. It was strongest when the world was 
young, simply because then the unexplored wilder- 
ness predominated, and by very necessity something of 
the sort was required. Having fulfilled its function this 
product of the necessities of the moment is presumed 
to weaken, to fade away, until with the settling of the 
wilderness it will logically atrophy and disappear, like 
any other disused functioning organ of nature that has 
been outgrown. Within such a conception we speak of 
a Pioneer Age as an epoch in which the pioneer spirit 
was especially predominant; when ^lan — with the 
capital M — had to be a pioneer as a matter of usual 
circumstance, as a part of his daily job. We conceive 
that necessity, as a necessity, to have passed; and when 
one goes far afield we think of him as a man who is 
seeking to satisfy an instinct surviving from his past. 
He is playing the pioneer. He is deliberately leaving 
the comforts of home and civilization in order to place 
himself in circumstances where he must kill his own 
meat, cook his own food, make his unaided way about, 
and construct his own abiding-place. At any moment 
of his choice he can return to his usual surroundings, 
where artisans and specialists of all sorts will do these 



IX 



ROOSEVELT AND 

laborious things for him. He is in the position of the 
young chap with the miUionaire father who, after leav- 
ing college, goes to work for ten dollars a week, and 
who does most honestly and consistently live on his 
earnings. Nevertheless, the millionaire father is in the 
background, and the mere fact of his existence de- 
prives the situation of the ultimate grim spectre of 
necessity to do or starve that makes for stark reality. 

From this point of view the modern Wilderness 
Hunter is a sort of survival; one who plays; one who 
tries to reproduce or enter as nearly as possible past 
conditions in order to gratify the stirrings of an old 
instinct. The Pioneer Spirit is a product of the neces- 
sities of another age; and in due time it will — like all 
outgrown things — gradually fade out and disappear. 

But there is another view. After all, a more intimate 
consideration shows small essential difference in this 
respect between the present and the past. As far back 
as we can discern, there have always been cities and 
civilizations where men so inclined could live in the 
comfort of having things done for them, and to which 
they could always return at any time their inclination 
advised. Always. Nobody needed to go into the wil- 
derness unless he wanted to do so: and he could come 
out of the wilderness whenever he pleased. Economic 
pressure? Of course it existed and urged. But can 
any one doubt that if these adventurers, whose bold- 
ness led them forth, had elected to remain, they would 
have won in competition with the softer stay-at-homes ? 
They did not have to go. Men think they move through 
the intellectual consideration of various motives — the 
bettering of economic conditions, the hope of conquest, 
the desire to go — look — see, the lure of big game; but 
the actual thing that sends them forth anywhere is a 



THE PIONEER SPIRIT 

quality within — the spirit of the pioneer. The discom- 
fort or difficulty of living conditions, the religious or 
political oppression, the crowding of overpopulation, 
exerted an equal pressure on each and all. Yet one 
stayed at home, and the other with axe and rifle scaled 
the Alleghanies and established his precarious foot- 
hold in the Dark and Bloody Ground. Some real and 
definite thing within tipped that decision, an enduring 
spirit. 

Like any enduring spirit, this Pioneer Spirit mani- 
fests itself in various ways according to the materials 
offered for its working. And, as with any spirit, some 
circumstances bring out its qualities more easily than 
do others. The law of gravitation works on a feather 
as on a leaden bullet — no more and no less — but con- 
ditions of bulk and air resistance and the like make the 
bullet a better example for observation. Every chem- 
ist, every physicist, knows that for easy examination — 
spectacular observation, one might say — any law has 
its particularly responsive medium through which it 
acts on lines of least resistance. It is no less strong nor 
less complete in a more stubborn material, but it is 
not so readily apparent. So this pioneer spirit has its 
most obvious manifestation in the physical wilderness. 
There it works near the surface, in its congenial ma- 
terial. But the absence or the lessening of that most 
congenial material does not necessarily mean the ab- 
sence or lessening of the pioneer spirit itself. It exists 
as strong and as pure always, something essential and 
eternal in the progress of mankind. 

What then can we call this pioneer spirit in terms 
broad enough to cover all its manifestations ? I should 
say it might be defined as the outreaching spirit, the 
spirit that refuses to take things for granted and ready- 

xi 



ROOSEVELT AND 

made. It is that which insists on the constructing of 
Hfe direct from the raw materials; on the facing of hfe 
without interpositions; on the manifestation of Hfe 
without other aid than one's own knowledge, faculties, 
and native genius. In another aspect, it is the desire 
to measure oneself against the naked forces of life; and 
an inextinguishable passion to go on, to explore, to see 
what is beyond. 

Now, as I have pointed out, the most plastic ma- 
terial, which most easily and most nearly approximates 
a physical manifestation of this spirit, is undoubtedly 
the wilderness. There each of its aspects or attributes 
jBnds satisfaction in the most direct terms. There a 
man can find room, physical room, in wide spaces under 
distant stars, to reach outward in the utmost expansion 
of which he is capable. He meets the conditions of life 
face to face and personally. The lowest terms of bare 
existence he must accomplish before he can proceed 
on his quest — or even survive. Warmth, food, and 
shelter — the three essentials — are to be had only by 
the exercise of his wits and hands. And the strong 
stark primitive forces of nature are always ready with 
their tests of his physical and moral strength. Man 
matches himself against the world-wide never-changing 
forces of the Wilderness, and through them gains a 
measure of himself. 

No, the pioneer spirit is no ephemeral expedient of 
a time or a condition: it is an enduring basic instinct 
of mankind. In some simple souls it is so strong that 
they must follow it blindly, yet with love, counter to 
all the dictates of comfort, worldly advantage, or even 
common sense. And since they are simple they take 
the line of least resistance toward its most plastic ma- 
terial of manifestation — the Wilderness. I have seen 

• • 

Xll 



THE PIONEER SPIRIT 

dozens of them in all parts of the world. They seem to 
the casual outsider almost deliberately to have selected 
the most difficult situations in which to make a living. 
With the thought of the rich easy farming of California 
or the Middle West in my mind, I have, under guidance 
of its proud but inarticulate owner, inspected almost 
with a feeling of sadness their pathetic effort in the 
Wilderness. Great trees felled by the labor of hands 
and simple jacks; stumps pulled by main strength; a 
stubborn soil full of roots; fence-rails split by single- 
handed labor of saw and axe and wedge — an immense 
labor. And after five years, or ten, or twenty, a tiny 
patch cleared free, a row of berry- vines, a dozen apple- 
trees, a truck-patch of vegetables. The whole thing 
from any practical point of view not worth a half-acre 
of the fat lands *'back home." And, close about, the 
Wilderness biding its time, awaiting patiently the in- 
evitable moment when it can again take over its own. 
You will find them everywhere — clinging to the steep 
mountains on the British Columbia coast; squatting in 
some tiny sun-baked valley of the south where the only 
green thing is the hard-won alfalfa-field (and the nearest 
market a twenty-mile haul) and the only shade an 
anxiously coaxed cotton wood-tree. And as you travel 
about you will often come upon the disintegrating cast- 
off shells — the cabin falling in, the fences tottering or 
down, the spring box rotted away — the Wilderness re- 
claiming its own. Or inexplicably, in the middle of a 
forest, perhaps a half-dozen apple-trees, or a berry -vine 
struggling bravely against the smothering of wild 
things, or even a single garden-flower miraculously 
blooming, alone remain to mark where hope and toil 
have upsprung and died like flames. 

But try to talk to these men in such terms ! You 

• • • 

xni 



ROOSEVELT AND 

will soon discover that you are somewhere mistaken 
in your pity of their hard lot. They are doing these 
things because they like to do them. The liking may 
be inarticulate— it almost always is— but it is deep 
and true. They would not live anywhere else in the 
w^orld. Pressed for a reason, they merely "sorta like 
it." I received recently a letter from a man sixty-four 
years of age w ho lives quite alone at the foot of a beau- 
tiful little bay surrounded by high mountains. He has 
w^orked on his "place" for nearly thirty years. His 
possessions are now^ a small cabin, a good-sized orchard, 
six or eight goats, a vegetable-patch, tw^o long stone 
terraces planted with bright-colored flowers, and a 
glorious rose-vine over his door. Wlien he wants mail 
or supplies he rows twenty-eight miles. He is per- 
fectly happy, and he has plans for his "place" in detail 
for eight years ahead. \Yhat he has accomplished 
physically could be produced elsewhere by an almost 
ridiculously small expenditure of labor and time and 
capital. What he has accomplished spiritually it 
would be difficult to measure. 

"I am still at the same old game," he writes, "hand 
logging. The year just ended I made just about $400, 
never worked hard, alw^ays my own boss, had every- 
thing I wanted, my young orchard coming along nicely, 
a nice w^arm house, lots of grub and a fine assortment 
of music." 

II 

But the Pioneer Spirit has other mediums besides its 
most plastic material, the Wilderness. All of life offers 
manifestation. And now that the greatly important 
work of the world has no longer one of its larger abid- 
ing-places in the wilderness, the complex man has 

xiv 



THE PIONEER SPIRIT 

ceased to find there a satisfying field for his full power. 
The spirit of the pioneer must seek other materials of 
life in which to body itself forth. In constructive busi- 
ness, in invention, in statesmanship, in science, in what- 
ever the times offer of great opportunity for endeavor, 
there it strives to embody the attributes of its quality, 
— its outreaching, its constructing from the raw, its 
facing without intervention, its independence and im- 
patience of unearned aid. Nevertheless, always its at- 
traction is toward its most congenial material of expres- 
sion; always within such a business man, laboratory 
worker, statesman, or whoever, glows that instinct for 
the open places; always his ear is attuned to the call 
of the Red Gods. 

It looks like a play instinct, but it strikes deeper into 
the fundamentals of being. Its immediate expression 
is the camping trip, the fishing excursion, the minor or 
greater exploration, the hving perhaps for longer or less- 
er periods the actual life of the pioneer. In a way it is 
indeed a playtime, when the Pioneer Spirit turns from 
the stubborn and alien material in which it has worked 
to luxuriate in the vehicle of its easiest and most direct 
expression. It does not, as in the simpler or sometimes 
more philosophic present-day backwoodsman, remain 
content with this expression only, simply because, 
though it finds there the easiest and most direct, it no 
longer finds there the fullest. A few generations ago 
wilderness exploration, wilderness taming, was one of 
the great world needs. In the crudest sense it is so no 
longer. And the Pioneer Spirit, working through other 
than the simpler souls, requires for its inspiration the 
urging of a world instinct. 



XV 



ROOSEVELT AND 



in 



Theodore Roosevelt was filled with the spirit of the 
pioneer. It bodied itself forth in every aspect of his 
manifold activities. In whatever he did he pushed out 
by choice from the cities into an open space where he 
could look about him clearly and in final analysis take 
counsel with himself alone. He had his equipment of 
knowledge and opinion fashioned by other men, and he 
took with him the charts and maps of the country as 
far as they had been compiled, but in the great Direc- 
tions of his intention he zestfully and boldly followed 
his own compass and his own observations of the eter- 
nal verities which were his stars. From his earliest 
boyhood of physical deficiency he tackled life and all 
its problems in the terms we have defined. First of all 
he made himself; he got together his outfit. Then joy- 
ously he faced the great wilderness of life. And in him 
was the Pioneer Spirit — "the outreaching spirit, the 
spirit that refuses to take things for granted or ready- 
made; that insists on the constructing of life direct 
from the raw materials, on the facing of life without 
interpositions; on the manifestation of life without 
other aid than his own knowledge, faculties, and native 
genius." Through all his interests and activities we 
see this to be true — whether in politics, in books, in 
friendships, in recreations, in his formulations of life's 
meanings. And when sometimes he preached the 
homely eternally true things some people called "plati- 
tudes," it was through no mere acceptance because 
world experience had builded and accepted; it was be- 
cause he had himself enriched them by the whole circle 
of his own experience and had found them there on his 

xvi 



THE PIONEER SPIRIT 

return — homely and eternally true. And how he en- 
joyed it all ! with the enthusiasm that ever must at- 
tend the perfect functioning of any such deeply primal 
instinct. 

Naturally the satisfaction of this trait of character 
was one of Roosevelt's most ardent happinesses, and 
its recreation in its most congenial medium of expres- 
sion one of his greatest satisfactions. He was never 
more animated or eager than when talking over trips, 
or country, or natural history, or hunting, or explora- 
tions, or the methods of, or equipments for, any of them. 
And he was himself recurrently afield — on long expe- 
ditions when he felt he had earned them; on shorter 
hunting trips, such as the Colorado cougar-coursing or 
the Southern cane-brakes, when he could snatch the 
opportunity; and, when such opportunity lacked, on 
long tramps and rides and miniature three-hour camps 
near home. All this was in no sense to imitate, however 
closely, past and gone conditions — as the small boy 
dresses himself out in Indian feathers — but because in 
the open the strong Pioneer Spirit with which he was 
informed most easily became self-aware. 

All his life was punctuated by these adventures, 
great and small. The Dakota experience, the x\frica 
experience, and the South America experience were, I 
believe, the episodes of the most complete satisfaction 
to him. And, in spite of the wider general significance 
of South America and Africa, I venture to guess that 
when all was balanced Dakota gave him the most. 
There he most fully blended with the actual, every -day, 
workaday life of the men busily engaged not in explora- 
tion merely, but in the actual making of a new country. 
He engaged himself seriously in their pursuits, as one 
of them. And he came to be considered as one of them. 

xvii 



ROOSEVELT AND 

The "extra baggage" he brought with him from the 
older civiHzation — the point of view, the wider cultiva- 
tion — was set down not to racial difference as is usual 
in the case of a "tenderfoot," but to mere personal idio- 
syncrasy, such as wearing pink chaps might be. The 
essential kinship was recognized. The Pioneer Spirit 
knew and greeted its own. 

IV 

The present volume (together with " Hunting Trips of 
a Ranchman") deals mainly with the sportsman's side 
of this experience. The hunter's instinct was in him 
strongly developed ; and as was his habit he faced fairly 
and squarely all the questions involved in that instinct. 
He was always somewhat impatient with the sentimen- 
talist on the subject of killing. The killing of an animal 
is no more — and no less — important than the killing 
of a tree, or a flower, or a vegetable. All are mani- 
festations in form of one thing — the essence of life; and 
the fact that the imprisoned life is in one case a tree 
and in the other an animal is only due to the circum- 
stance that there is some Tree Quality or Tree Inten- 
tion and some Animal Quality or Animal Intention — 
attributes, so to speak, of the life essence — that thus 
embodies itself for an inscrutable purpose. From this 
point of view an individual elephant does not differ 
basically from an individual fly. They are like dust in 
the atmosphere that shows as particular motes when it 
drifts across a sun-ray. 

The whole structure of life in general consists in the 
destruction of this sort of life in particular. The food 
even the sentimentalist eats; shoes, and many of the 
clothes he wears; the conveniences he uses all represent 

xviii 



THE PIONEER SPIRIT 

the passing back into the reservoir of life that which 
life has briefly embodied. Nor must it be forgotten, 
when considering the wild-animal aspect, that the nor- 
mal end of any beast is in tragedy. Death by old age 
is exceptional. The bullet is infinitely more merciful 
from the sentimental point of view than fang or starva- 
tion. Roosevelt's common sense told him that the kill- 
ing is nothing except as it reacts on the one who kills. 
That with him, as with all thinking sportsmen, was 
the crux of the whole matter. The hunting instinct 
was noble because, rightly followed, it was a vehicle for 
the development of the manly qualities. That means 
one must do his own hunting. The man who follows 
the tail of a guide or gillie, subordinating his every 
faculty to an ordered obedience and imitation up to 
the moment when he is thrust forward and told to shoot 
as straight as he can, gains little or nothing for himself. 
He gets considerable beneficial outdoor exercise; has 
some scenery thrust on him — in half-caught glimpses — 
that he would not have seen except through this in- 
centive; he has a chance to test his rudimentary con- 
trol of his nerve-reactions; and he leads a physically 
healthful life — provided he has left the whiskey home. 
He could get the same benefits from a golf game, a 
motor trip, a bridle-path, or perhaps some one to lead 
him around a little out-of-doors on the end of a string. 
He brings home a trophy that is a false certificate; for 
the only thing that distinguishes in value between a 
cow head and a moose head is that the latter is a visual 
evidence that a man has presumably known and done 
and endured various things not necessary to the ac- 
quisition of a cow head. If he has not known and done 
and endured these things, but has depended for them 
on some other man, he might just as well in common 

xix 



ROOSEVELT AND 

honesty hang up the cow. Yet even in this extremely 
dilute sportsmanship the mere killing is a minor thing. 
The veriest "sport" would get little satisfaction in try- 
ing his accuracy in a pasture. 

But the hunter on his own must for even moderate 
success do an immense amount of work of all sorts. 
He must develop an iron hardihood; an indifference 
to discomforts great and small; a single-minded de- 
termination in face of apparent impossibility; great 
physical endurance; accurate nerve and muscular co- 
ordination; nice judgment; a vast lore of woodcraft; 
wide knowledge of the varying habits under all con- 
ditions of the game he pursues; close observation and 
the power of synthetic correlation of what he sees; an 
immense and philosophic patience; a certain ability to 
enter into and understand the mental processes of his 
quarry; indifference to profound fatigue; an unquench- 
able optimism; and an indomitable resistance to cir- 
cumstance. The habitually successful hunter must 
possess these things, and their perfection is only gained 
by development. 

Roosevelt w as of this type of sportsman. In common 
with all worthy exponents of the class, he was in final 
analysis more interested in live animals than in dead. 
He was eager in the preservation of wild life, keen in 
observation of all things that move or grow. His natu- 
ralist's eye was wonderfully accurate and remarkably 
catholic in its scope of interest, and his interest in any 
one who could be supposed to know anything about 
any branch of the subject was instant. At the busiest 
periods of his life he would always drop business, if it 
were humanly possible, to discuss with some wilderness 
tramp like myself a fact or a theory having to do with 
out-of-door creatures or peoples. So keen was his 

XX 



THE PIONEER SPIRIT 

power of jBrst-hand observation and so robust was his 
common sense that he generally had his feet pretty 
solidly on the ground in these matters. He preferred 
to argue from experience rather than authority, though 
he seemed to have read and to possess on file in the 
front of his mind about everything that had been said 
on the subject. This robust common sense enabled 
him to perform the literature of outdoors a great ser- 
vice in ventilating it free of the sentimental personifica- 
tions, and the narration of non-typical or unusual or 
impossible episodes as if they were habitual, which, 
under the guidance of the "nature-fakers," was threat- 
ening to reduce the whole thing, in children's minds at 
least, to a slush of misconception. So, too, he never 
hesitated to rend the too fine-spun. The reductio ad 
ahsurdum of the theory of protective coloration, which 
was a good general idea chased into a maze of absurd 
particularity; or the tendency of naturalists to divide 
and subdivide species according to specimen character- 
istics without sufficient regard to factors of environ- 
ment and distribution, are good examples of what never 
failed first to arouse his mirth, next his honest indig- 
nation that truth should be so emasculated, and finally 
his attack. The most and the longest letters I received 
from Roosevelt, written most of them at times of his 
greatest activities, were on such subjects. 

His observation and interest were equally keen in 
regard to all the other details of the wilderness. These 
qualities, together with his remarkably retentive mem- 
ory, brought him very quickly to an intimate under- 
standing of any sort of new life and what to do therein. 
And he liked to do whatever there was to be done, not 
in the spirit of the small boy holding the ends of the 
reins while his father drives, but as one taking care of 

xxi 



ROOSEVELT AND 

himself by himself. He understood perfectly the proper 
function of a guide, and he used the guide within that 
function and no further. The guide is legitimate — and 
valuable — as a short cut. He has local knowledge, and 
his task is to take a man with limited time at his dis- 
posal to where the game is. That is all. He does the 
long and necessary eliminations. It is not within his 
legitimate functions to lead his man around on a dog- 
chain after that. 

R. J. Cuninghame, the elephant-hunter, once told 
me an anecdote having to do with this point. I had 
killed a Robert's gazelle with horns of unusual length 
and of a very peculiar type of spread. Cuning- 
hame, who is a very careful and interested scientist, 
was much intrigued by it, and made many measure- 
ments. 

"I'm glad you got this," said he; "the only other 
specimen I ever saw of this kind I killed myself when 
with the Roosevelt expedition. I shot the beast for 
camp meat. It was so unusual and valuable a speci- 
men that I thought it ought to be preserved. The 
Colonel thought so too, but after considering the matter 
for some time he decided against it. He was awfully 
decent about it, but he carried his point. 

"'Cuninghame,' he said to me, 'if we were just out 
hunting together, I'd say to keep it. But this expedi- 
tion of mine is pretty well known as the Roosevelt 
Expedition, and I've been a long time planning it and 
looking forward to it as the big adventure in my sports- 
man's life. I don't want it possible to have it said with 
even a shadow of truth that I came out here and had 
things done for me. I want to be able to say with 
entire truth that as far as this collection is concerned 
I stood on my own feet. I can't afford to let you, or 

xxii 



THE PIONEER SPIRIT 

anybody else, shoot even one animal for it. I've got 
to be able to look them in the eye.' 

*'I hated to let that head go," concluded Cuning- 
hame, "but I could see the point." 



Roosevelt was fond of describing himself as a poor 
rifle-shot, and he said it so often that people began to 
believe it. It is true that he had not the deadly in- 
variable accuracy in the field possessed by the expert 
practical rifleman of the first class. This was largely 
due to eyesight. But to be a "good shot" in the field 
means a lot more than the ability to put rifle-bullets 
close together on an artificial mark. Roosevelt could 
have outshot the majority of target experts were he to 
compete with them at game in natural surroundings. 
His degree of skill was always at command, no matter 
what the circumstances. That is an exceedingly im- 
portant point. Mere conditions of light, surroundings, 
and distance make an immense difference. I once saw 
a "fancy" shot — one of those fellows who hit marbles 
tossed in the air, and all that sort of thing — miss a 
mountain-goat eleven times in succession at not over 
a hundred and fifty yards. Elements of overeager- 
ness — "buck fever" — control in danger; necessity for 
haste, for quick decision, enter into the game. And, 
unless one is tailing a guide most reprehensibly, it is 
necessary, in spite of keen senses and cunning wits, 
to get where one can deliver an effective fire. Roose- 
velt knew his woodcraft and the habits of his quarry; 
he was always cool and capable of his best; he realized 
his limitations and kept within them. The net result 
was that so far from being a poor shot, he was an ex- 

xxiii 



ROOSEVELT AND 

ceedingly good game-shot, a much better game-shot 
than the majority of riflemen; no matter what the 
comparison over a measured distance on a piece of 
paper with rings might have shown. It is only once in 
a blue moon that a rifleman of the first accuracy pos- 
sesses also a knowledge of animals, complete control 
of himself and his knowledge in all circumstances, and 
can on game deliver with regularity his target accuracy. 
Then he is not merely a good shot; he is an expert. 
And experts are very, very rare. 

VI 

Roosevelt's hunting books reflect very accurately 
what we have been saying, and for that reason they 
are among the best hunting books I know. A tiresome 
number of such narrations deal mainly with the size of 
the bag and the minute details of the killing and the 
killer. Anything that has to do with the particular 
animal sought or with the trials, tribulations, personal 
discomforts or triumphs of the man who pursued it, is 
of importance and is meticulously set down. All other 
considerations, if mentioned at all, convey only a 
blurred or hazy impression of something caught out of 
the corner of the eye. In other words, the book is a 
killer book. Fortunately that is, nine times in ten, 
due rather to literary ignorance on the writer's part 
and a mistaken notion of what is expected, than to the 
fact that he is merely a killer. Comparatively few un- 
adulterated, ringed-nosed guide-led "sports" go afield 
and write books, as balanced against the men who, 
though inarticulate or self-conscious with the pen, try 
to record their adventures. Nevertheless the fact re- 
mains that the average "hunting book" is about as 

xxiv 



THE PIONEER SPIRIT 

dull and tiresome and uninspiring as the average per- 
sonal diary. Its vista is straight and narrow and walled 
in. At the far end stands the mighty hunter with his 
foot on a prostrate beast. As to what of field or flower 
or even of other beasts may lie to right or left, the walls 
will not permit us to know. 

But Roosevelt's fresh eager interest in things about 
him would never permit of walls. In the closest pur- 
suit of grizzly or lion he was quite capable of pausing 
for observation of a pine-finch or a sunbird, or the con- 
duct of a flower; and he tells you of it when he tells you 
of the hunt. " The Wilderness Hunter " and " Hunting 
Trips of a Ranchman" are not merely a sportsman's 
account of trophies bagged; they are a picture of the 
West in the Eighties, they are a familiar natural his- 
tory of the region, they are a collection of shrewd ob- 
servations and reflection on men and manners, they 
are a picturesque and vivid running narrative of resi- 
dence and travel. Their pages are a reflection, as in a 
mirror, of just the aspect of the Pioneer Spirit we 
have been discussing. The importance of the mere 
record of game killed is analogous to the importance 
of the mere killing. What is really important is the 
development and exercise of valuable and noble qual- 
ities. A book of hunting is worth while — and inter- 
esting — to just the extent that it conveys directly or 
indirectly the surroundings, the zest, the atmosphere, 
the observation, the circumstance of this development. 

That is the reason why the man whose tastes or 
whose opportunities bar his personal experience in 
the wilderness buys and reads with relish these books 
and "African Game Trails." He finds there the feel of 
the country as it conveys itself to an actual observer 
through countless details; he delights in thousands of 

XXV 



ROOSEVELT AND THE PIONEER SPIRIT 

accurate small natural-history observations of birds and 
beasts and flowers that can by no possibility have the 
ulterior interest of pursuit; he learns of men and cus- 
toms, and is offered side-lights of experience, of theory, 
of speculation to ponder over; he is amused by anecdote 
and narrative that are not totally concerned with the 
capture of trophies — he gets his adventure garnished, 
so to speak. And when the adventure focusses he is 
present not merely at the death of an animal, he as- 
sists at a culmination. He lays aside the book, not so 
much with a regret that he cannot go and do likewise, 
as with the feeling that he has been brought into closer 
intimacy wath the Wilderness, and an understanding of 
man's relations to her and the qualities in him she at 
once develops and demands. Perhaps he sees — if he 
is very intelligently introspective — certainly he feels, 
that these qualities are or should be his own. He senses 
his kinship with the Pioneer Spirit. 



XXVI 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 



TO 

E. K, R. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

The Wilderness Hunter. An account of the big game of the United 
States and its chase with horse, hound, and rifle. By Theodore Roosevelt, 
author of "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman," "Ranch Life and the Hunting 
Trail," etc. President of the Boone and Crockett Club of New York; 
Honorary Member of the London Alpine Club. Illustrated. New York 
and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1893. 

xvi, 472 p., illus., ^vo, tan cloth. 

With the exception of the first part of Chapter XII, this work did not appear 
serially but was first pubhshed in book form, as above. Pages 230-245 of Chapter 
XII were first published as buffalo hunting in St. Nicholas, December, 1889, 
with six illustrations by Frederic Remington, one of which was printed in the 
first edition opposite p. 242. 

The second edition, on large paper, limited to 200 copies, signed by the author, 
also appeared in 1893, and other editions have frequently been printed. It ap- 
peared as the second part of big game hunting in 1899; and as the second part 
of HUNTING TALES OF THE WEST, a fouT-volumc Set published in 1907. In hunting 
TALES OF THE WEST and in five editions of Roosevelt's works, the wilderness 
hunter is divided into two parts, the second appearing under the title: hunting 

THE GRIZZLY AND OTHER SKETCHES. 

"In this volume I have avoided repeating what was contained in either of my 
former books, the hunting trips op a RANCHiL\N and ranch life and the 
HUNTING trail." — Appendix. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

For a number of years much of my life was spent 
either in the wilderness or on the borders of the settled 
country — if, indeed, "settled" is a term that can 
rightly be applied to the vast, scantily peopled regions 
where cattle-ranching is the only regular industry. 
During this time I hunted much, among the mountains 
and on the plains, both as a pastime and to procure 
hides, meat, and robes for use on the ranch; and it 
was my good luck to kill all the various kinds of large 
game that can properly be considered to belong to 
temperate North America. 

In hunting, the finding and killing of the game is 
after all but a part of the w^hole. The free, self-reliant, 
adventurous life, with its rugged and stalwart democ- 
racy; the wild surroundings, the grand beauty of the 
scenery, the chance to study the ways and habits of 
the woodland creatures — all these unite to give to 
the career of the wilderness hunter its peculiar charm. 
The chase is among the best of all national pastimes; 
it cultivates that vigorous manliness for the lack of 
which in a nation, as in an individual, the possession 
of no other qualities can possibly atone. 

No one, but he who has partaken thereof, can 
understand the keen delight of hunting in lonely lands. 
For him is the joy of the horse well ridden and the 
rifle well held; for him the long days of toil and hard- 
ship, resolutely endured, and crowned at the end with 
triumph. In after-years there shall come forever to 
his mind the memory of endless prairies shimmering 

xxxi 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

in the bright sun; of vast snow-clad wastes lying deso- 
late under gray skies; of the melancholy marshes; of 
the rush of mighty rivers; of the breath of the ever- 
green forest in summer; of the crooning of ice-armored 
pines at the touch of the winds of winter; of cataracts 
roaring between hoary mountain masses; of all the in- 
numerable sights and sounds of the wilderness; of its 
immensity and mystery; and of the silences that brood 
in its still depths. 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



Sagamore Hill, 
June, 1893. 



xxxn 



CONTENTS 



Author's Preface xxxi 

CHAPTER 

I. The American Wilderness; Wilderness 

Hunters and Wilderness Game .... 3 



II. Hunting from the Ranch; the Blacktail 
Deer 

III. The Whitetail Deer; and the Blacktail 

OF the Columbia 

IV. On the Cattle-Ranges; the Pronghorn 

Antelope 

V. Hunting the Prongbuck ; Frost, Fire, and 
Thirst 

VI. Among the High Hills; the Bighorn or 
Mountain-Sheep 



VII. Mountain Game; the White Goat . 

VIII. Hunting in the Selkirks; the Caribou 

IX. The Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk 

X. An Elk-Hunt at Two-Ocean Pass . 

XI. The Moose; the Beast of the Woodland 

XII. The Bison or American Buffalo 

XIII. The Black Bear 

XIV. Old Ephraim, the Grizzly Bear 
XV. Hunting the Grizzly .... 

XVI. The Cougar 



20 
35 
51 

68 

92 
102 
120 
143 
162 
186 
211 
234 
243 
272 
308 



XXXIU 



CONTENTS 

FAQB 

CHAPTER on A 

XVII. A Peccary-Hunt on the Nueces .... 320 

XVIII. Hunting with Hounds 332 

XIX. Wolves and Wolf-Hounds 355 

XX. In Cowboy Land 379 

XXI. Hunting Lore 412 

Appendix 429 



xxxiv 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 




THE AIVIERICAN TVILDERNESS: WILDERNESS 
HUNTERS AND WILDERNESS GAIVIE 

ANIFOLD are the shapes taken by 
the American wilderness. In the east, 
from the Atlantic coast to the Missis- 
sippi valley, lies a land of magnificent 
hardwood forest. In endless variety 
and beauty, the trees cover the ground, 
save only where they have been cleared away by man, 
or where toward the west the expanse of the forest 
is broken by fertile prairies. Toward the north, this 
region of hardwood-trees merges insensibly into the 
southern extension of the great subarctic forest; here 
the silver stems of birches gleam against the sombre 
background of coniferous evergreens. In the southeast 
again, by the hot, oozy coasts of the South Atlantic and 
the Gulf, the forest becomes semitropical; palms wave 
their feathery fronds, and the tepid swamps teem with 
reptile life. 

Some distance beyond the Mississippi, stretching 
from Texas to North Dakota, and westward to the 
Rocky Mountains, lies the plains country. This is a 
region of light rainfall, where the ground is clad with 
short grass, while cottonwood-trees fringe the courses 
of the winding plains streams; streams that are alter- 
nately turbid torrents and mere dwindling threads of 
water. The great stretches of natural pasture are bro- 
ken by gray sage-brush plains and tracts of strangely 
shaped and colored Bad Lands ; sun-scorched wastes in 
summer, and in winter arctic in their iron desolation. 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

Beyond the plains rise the Rocky Mountains, their 
flanks covered with coniferous woods; but the trees 
are small, and do not ordinarily grow very closely to- 
gether. Toward the north the forest becomes denser, 
and the peaks higher; and glaciers creep down toward 
the valleys from the fields of everlasting snow. The 
brooks are brawling, trout-filled torrents; the swift 
rivers foam over rapid and cataract on their way to 
one or the other of the two great oceans. 

Southwest of the Rockies evil and terrible deserts 
stretch for leagues and leagues, mere waterless wastes 
of sandy plain and barren mountain, broken here and 
there by narrow strips of fertile ground. Rain rarely 
falls, and there are no clouds to dim the brazen sun. 
The rivers run in deep canyons, or are swallowed by 
the burning sand; the smaller watercourses are dry 
throughout the greater part of the year. 

Beyond this desert region rise the sunny Sierras of 
California, with their flower-clad slopes and groves of 
giant trees; and north of them, along the coast, the 
rain-shrouded mountain chains of Oregon and Wash- 
ington, matted with the towering growth of the mighty 
evergreen forest. 

The white hunters, who from time to time first pen- 
etrated the dift'erent parts of this wilderness, found 
themselves in such hunting-grounds as those wherein, 
long ages before, their Old World forefathers had 
dwelled ; and the game they chased was much the same 
as that their lusty barbarian ancestors followed, with 
weapons of bronze and of iron, in the dim years before 
history dawned. As late as the end of the seventeenth 
century the turbulent village nobles of Lithuania and 
Livonia hunted the bear, the bison, the elk, the wolf, 
and the stag, and hung the spoils in their smoky 

4 



THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS 

wooden palaces; and so, two hundred years later, the 
free hunters of Montana, in the interludes between haz- 
ardous mining quests and bloody Indian campaigns, 
hunted game almost or quite the same in kind, through 
the cold mountain forests surrounding the Yellowstone 
and Flathead lakes, and decked their log cabins and 
ranch-houses with the hides and horns of the slaughtered 
beasts. 

Zoologically speaking, the north temperate zones 
of the Old and New Worlds are very similar, differing 
from one another much less than they do from the 
various regions south of them, or than these regions 
differ among themselves. The untrodden American 
wilderness resembles both in game and physical char- 
acter the forests, the mountains, and the steppes of the 
Old World as it was at the beginning of our era. Great 
woods of pine and fir, birch and beech, oak and chestnut; 
streams where the chief game-fish are spotted trout and 
silvery salmon; grouse of various kinds as the most 
common game-birds ; all these the hunter finds as char- 
acteristic of the New World as of the Old. So it is with 
most of the beasts of the chase, and so also with the 
fur-bearing animals that furnish to the trapper alike 
his life-work and his means of livelihood. The bear, 
wolf, bison, moose, caribou, wapiti, deer, and bighorn, 
the lynx, fox, wolverene, sable, mink, ermine, beaver, 
badger, and otter of both worlds are either identical 
or more or less closely kin to one another. Sometimes 
of the two forms, that found in the Old World is the 
larger. Perhaps more often the reverse is true, the 
American beast being superior in size. This is markedly 
the case with the wapiti, which is merely a giant brother 
of the European stag, exactly as the fisher is merely a 
very large cousin of the European sable or marten. 

5 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

The extraordinary prongbuck, the only hollow-horned 
ruminant which sheds its horns annually, is a distant 
representative of the Old World antelopes of the 
steppes; the queer white antelope-goat has for its 
nearest kinsfolk certain Himalayan species. Of the 
animals commonly known to our hunters and trappers, 
only a few, such as the cougar, peccary, raccoon, possum 
(and among birds the wild turkey), find their nearest 
representatives and type forms in tropical America. 

Of course this general resemblance does not mean 
identity. The differences in plant life and animal life, 
no less than in the physical features of the land, are 
sufficiently marked to give the American wilderness a 
character distinctly its own. Some of the most char- 
acteristic of the woodland animals, some of those which 
have most vividly impressed themselves on the im- 
agination of the hunters and pioneer settlers, are the 
very ones which have no Old World representatives. 
The wild turkey is in every way the king of American 
game-birds. Among the small beasts the coon and the 
possum are those which have left the deepest traces in 
the humbler lore of the frontier; exactly as the cougar 
— usually under the name of panther or mountain-lion 
— is a favorite figure in the wilder hunting tales. 
Nowhere else is there anything to match the wealth 
of the eastern hardwood forests, in number, variety, 
and beauty of trees; nowhere else is it possible to find 
conifers approaching in size the giant redwoods and 
sequoias of the Pacific slope. Nature here is generally 
on a larger scale than in the Old World home of our 
race. The lakes are like inland seas, the rivers like 
arms of the sea. Among stupendous mountain chains 
there are valleys and canyons of fathomless depth and 
incredible beauty and majesty. There are tropical 

6 



THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS 

swamps, and sad, frozen marshes; deserts and Death 
Valleys, weird and evil, and the strange wonderland of 
the Wyoming geyser region. The waterfalls are rivers 
rushing over precipices; the prairies seem without limit, 
and the forest never-ending. 

At the time when we first became a nation, nine- 
tenths of the territory now included within the limits 
of the United States was wilderness. It was during 
the stirring and troubled years immediately preceding 
the outbreak of the Revolution that the most adven- 
turous hunters, the vanguard of the hardy army of 
pioneer settlers, first crossed the Alleghanies, and 
roamed far and wide through the lonely, danger- 
haunted forests which filled the No-man's-land lying 
between the Tennessee and the Ohio. They waged 
ferocious warfare with Shawnee and Wyandot and 
wrought huge havoc among the herds of game with 
which the forest teemed. Wliile the first Continental 
Congress was still sitting, Daniel Boone, the archetype 
of the American hunter, was leading his bands of tall 
backwoods riflemen to settle in the beautiful country 
of Kentucky, where the red and the white warriors 
strove with such obstinate rage that both races alike 
grew to know it as *' the dark and bloody ground." 

Boone and his fellow hunters were the heralds of the 
oncoming civilization, the pioneers in that conquest 
of the wilderness which has at last been practically 
achieved in our own day. Where they pitched their 
camps and built their log huts or stockaded hamlets 
towns grew up, and men who were tillers of the soil, 
not mere wilderness wanderers, thronged in to take 
and hold the land. Then, ill at ease among the set- 
tlements for which they had themselves made ready 
the way, and fretted even by the slight restraints of 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the rude and uncouth semiciviHzation of the border, 
the restless hunters moved onward into the yet un- 
broken wilds where the game dwelt and the red tribes 
marched forever to war and hunting. Their untamable 
souls ever found something congenial and beyond mea- 
sure attractive in the lawless freedom of the lives of the 
very savages against whom they warred so bitterly. 

Step by step, often leap by leap, the frontier of set- 
tlement was pushed westward; and ever from before 
its advance fled the warrior tribes of the red men and 
the scarcely less intractable array of white Indian 
fighters and game-hunters. AMien the Revolutionary 
T\'ar was at its height, George Rogers Clark, himself a 
mighty hunter of the old backwoods t}^e, led his hand- 
ful of hunter-soldiers to the conquest of the French 
towns of the Illinois. This was but one of the manv 
notable feats of arms performed by the wild soldiery 
of the backwoods. Clad in their fringed and tasseUed 
hunting-shirt of buckskin or homespun, with coonskin 
caps and deer-hide leggings and moccasins, with toma- 
hawk and scalping-knife thrust into their bead-worked 
belts, and long rifles in hand, they fought battle after 
battle of the most bloody character, both against the 
Indians, as at the Great Kanawha, at the Fallen 
Timbers, and at Tippecanoe, and against more civi- 
lized foes, as at King's Mountain, New Orleans, and 
the River Thames. 

Soon after the beginning of the present century 
Louisiana fell into our hands, and the most daring 
hunters and explorers pushed through the forests of 
the Mississippi valley to the great plains, steered across 
these vast seas of grass to the Rocky Mountains, and 
then through their rugged defiles onward to the Pacific 
Ocean. In every work of exploration, and in all the 

8 



THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS 

earlier battles with the original lords of the western 
and southwestern lands, whether Indian or Mexican, 
the adventurous hunters played the leading part; 
while close behind came the swarm of hard, dogged, 
border farmers — a masterful race, good fighters and 
good breeders, as all masterful races must be. 

Very characteristic in its way was the career of 
quaint, honest, fearless Davy Crockett, the Tennessee 
rifleman and ^Miig Congressman, perhaps the best shot 
in all our country, whose skill in the use of his favorite 
weapon passed into a proverb, and who ended his days 
by a hero's death in the ruins of the Alamo. An even 
more notable man was another mighty hunter, Houston, 
who when a boy ran away to the Indians; who while 
still a lad returned to his own people to serve under 
Andrew Jackson in the campaigns which that greatest 
of all the backwoods leaders waged against the Creeks, 
the Spaniards, and the British. He was wounded at 
the storming of one of the strongholds of Red Eagle's 
doomed warriors, and returned to his Tennessee home 
to rise to high civil honor, and become the foremost 
man of his State. Then, while Governor of Tennessee, 
in a sudden fit of moody anger, and of mad longing for 
the unfettered life of the wilderness, he abandoned his 
office, his people, and his race, and fled to the Cherokees 
beyond the Mississippi. For years he lived as one of 
their chiefs; until one day, as he lay in ignoble ease 
and sloth, a rider from the south, from the rolling plains 
of the San Antonio and Brazos, brought word that the 
Texans were up, and in doubtful struggle striving to 
wrest their freedom from the lancers and carabineers of 
Santa Anna. Then his dark soul flamed again into 
burning life; riding by night and day he joined the 
risen Texans, was hailed by them as a heaven-sent 

9 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

leader, and at the San Jacinto led them on to the over- 
throw of the Mexican host. Thus the stark hunter, 
who had been alternately Indian fighter and Indian 
chief, became the President of the new republic, and, 
after its admission into the United States, a Senator 
at Washington; and, to his high honor, he remained 
to the end of his days stanchly loyal to the flag of the 
Union. 

By the time that Crockett fell, and Houston became 
the darling leader of the Texans, the typical hunter 
and Indian fighter had ceased to be a backwoodsman; 
he had become a plainsman or mountain-man; for 
the frontier, east of which he never willingly went, had 
been pushed beyond the Mississippi. Restless, reck- 
less, and hardy, he spent years of his life in lonely 
wanderings through the Rockies as a trapper; he 
guarded the slowly moving caravans which for pur- 
poses of trade journeyed over the dangerous Santa Fe 
trail; he guided the large parties of frontier settlers 
who, driving before them their cattle, with all their 
household goods in their white-topped wagons, spent 
perilous months and seasons on their weary way to 
Oregon or California. Joining in bands, the stalwart, 
skin-clad riflemen waged ferocious war on the Indians, 
scarcely more savage than themselves, or made long 
raids for plunder and horses against the outlying Mex- 
ican settlements. The best, the bravest, the most 
modest of them all was the renowned Kit Carson. 
He was not only a mighty hunter, a daring fighter, a 
finder of trails, and maker of roads through the un- 
known, untrodden wilderness, but also a real leader of 
men. Again and again he crossed and recrossed the 
continent, from the Mississippi to the Pacific; he 
guided many of the earliest military and exploring ex- 

10 



THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS 

peditions of the United States Government; he him- 
self led the troops in victorious campaigns against 
Apache and Navajo; and in the Civil War he was made 
a colonel of the Federal Army. 

After him came many other hunters. Most were 
pure-blooded Americans, but many were creole French- 
men, Mexicans, or even members of the so-called civi- 
lized Indian tribes, notably the Delawares. Wide were 
their wanderings, many their strange adventures in the 
chase, bitter their unending warfare with the red lords 
of the land. Hither and thither they roamed, from the 
desolate, burning deserts of the Colorado to the grassy 
plains of the Upper Missouri; from the rolling Texas 
prairies, bright beneath their sunny skies, to the high 
snow peaks of the northern Rockies, or the giant pine 
forests and soft rainy weather of the coasts of Puget 
Sound. Their main business was trapping, furs being 
the only articles yielded by the wilderness, as they 
knew it, which were both valuable and portable. These 
early hunters were all trappers likewise, and, indeed, 
used their rifles only to procure meat or repel attacks. 
The chief of the fur-bearing animals they followed was 
the beaver, which abounded in the streams of the plains 
and mountains; in the far north they also trapped 
otter, mink, sable, and fisher. They married squaws 
from among the Indian tribes with which they happened 
for the moment to be at peace; they acted as scouts 
for the United States troops in their campaigns against 
the tribes with which they happened to be at war. 

Soon after the Civil War the life of these hunters, 
taken as a class, entered on its final stage. The Pacific 
coast was already fairly well settled, and there were 
few mining-camps in the Rockies; but most of this 
Rocky Mountain region, and the entire stretch of plains 

11 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

country proper, the vast belt of level or rolling grass- 
land lying between the Rio Grande and the Saskatch- 
ewan, still remained primeval wilderness, inhabited 
only by roving hunters and formidable tribes of Indian 
nomads, and by the huge herds of game on which they 
preyed. Beaver swarmed in the streams and yielded 
a rich harvest to the trapper; but trapping was no 
longer the mainstay of the adventurous plainsmen. 
Foremost among the beasts of the chase, on account of 
its numbers, its size, and its economic importance, was 
the bison, or American buffalo ; its innumerable multi- 
tudes darkened the limitless prairies. As the trans- 
continental railroads were pushed toward completion, 
and the tide of settlement rolled onward with ever- 
increasing rapidity, buffalo-robes became of great value. 
The hunters forthwith turned their attention mainly to 
the chase of the great clumsy beasts, slaughtering them 
by hundreds of thousands for their hides; sometimes 
killing them on horseback, but more often on foot, by 
still-hunting, with the heavy, long-range Sharp's rifle. 
Throughout the fifteen years during which this slaughter 
lasted, a succession of desperate wars was waged with 
the banded tribes of the Horse Indians. All the time, 
in unending succession, long trains of big white-topped 
wagons crept slowly westward across the prairies, mark- 
ing the steady oncoming of the frontier settlers. 

By the close of 1883 the last buffalo-herd was de- 
stroyed. The beaver were trapped out of all the 
streams, or their numbers so thinned that it no longer 
paid to follow them. The last formidable Indian war 
had been brought to a successful close. The flood of 
the incoming whites had risen over the land; tongues 
of settlement reached from the Mississippi to the Rocky 
Mountains, and from the Rocky Mountains to the 

12 



THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS 

Pacific. The frontier had come to an end; it had 
vanished. With it vanished also the old race of wilder- 
ness hunters, the men who spent all their days in the 
lonely wilds, and who killed game as their sole means 
of livelihood. Great stretches of wilderness still re- 
mained in the Rocky Mountains, and here and there 
in the plains country, exactly as much smaller tracts 
of wild land are to be found in the Alleghanies and 
northern New York and New England; and on these 
tracts occasional hunters and trappers still linger; but 
as a distinctive class, with a peculiar and important 
position in American life, they no longer exist. 

There were other men besides the professional hunt- 
ers who lived on the borders of the wilderness and 
followed hunting, not only as a pastime but also as 
yielding an important portion of their subsistence. 
The frontier farmers were all hunters. In the Eastern 
backwoods, and in certain places in the West, as in 
Oregon, these adventurous tillers of the soil were the 
pioneers among the actual settlers; in the Rockies 
their places were taken by the miners, and on the great 
plains by the ranchmen and cowboys, the men who 
lived in the saddle, guarding their branded herds of 
horses and horned stock. Almost all of the miners and 
cowboys were obliged on occasions to turn hunters. 

Moreover, the regular army, which played so im- 
portant a part in all the later stages of the winning 
of the West, produced its full share of mighty hunters. 
The later Indian wars were fought principally by the 
regulars. The West Point officer and his little company 
of trained soldiers appeared abreast of the first hardy 
cattlemen and miners. The ordinary settlers rarely 
made their appearance until, in campaign after cam- 
paign, always inconceivably wearing and harassing 

13 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

and often very bloody in character, the scarred and 
tattered troops had broken and overthrown the most 
formidable among the Indian tribes. Faithful, uncom- 
plaining, unflinching, the soldiers wearing the national 
uniform lived for many weary years at their lonely 
little posts, facing unending toil and danger with quiet 
endurance, surrounded by the desolation of vast sol- 
itudes, and menaced by the most merciless of foes. 
Hunting was followed not only as a sport but also as 
the only means of keeping the posts and the expedition- 
ary trains in meat. Many of the officers became equally 
proficient as marksmen and hunters. The three most 
famous Indian fighters since the Civil War, Generals 
Custer, Miles, and Crook, were all keen and successful 
followers of the chase. 

Of American big game the bison, almost always 
known as the buffalo, was the largest and most im- 
portant to man. When the first white settlers landed 
in Virginia the bison ranged east of the Alleghanies 
almost to the seacoast, westward to the dry deserts 
lying beyond the Rocky Mountains, northward to the 
Great Slave Lake and southward to Chihuahua. It 
was a beast of the forests and mountains, in the Alle- 
ghanies no less than in the Rockies; but its true home 
was on the prairies and the high plains. Across these 
it roamed, hither and thither, in herds of enormous, of 
incredible, magnitude; herds so large that they covered 
the waving grass-land for hundreds of square leagues, 
and when on the march occupied days and days in 
passing a given point. But the seething myriads of 
shaggy-maned wild cattle vanished with remarkable 
and melancholy rapidity before the inroads of the white 
hunters, and the steady march of the oncoming settlers. 
Now they are on the point of extinction. Two or three 

14 



THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS 

hundred are left in that great national game-preserve 
the Yellowstone Park; and it is said that others still 
remain in the wintry desolation of Athabasca. Else- 
where only a few individuals exist — probably con- 
siderably less than half a hundred all told — scattered 
in small parties in the wildest and most remote and 
inaccessible portions of the Rocky Mountains. A 
bison bull is the largest American animal. His huge 
bulk, his short, curved black horns, the shaggy mane 
clothing his great neck and shoulders, give him a look 
of ferocity which his conduct belies. Yet he is truly a 
grand and noble beast, and his loss from our prairies 
and forests is as keenly regretted by the lover of 
nature and of wild life as by the hunter. 

Next to the bison in size, and much superior in 
height to it and to all other American game — for it is 
taller than the tallest horse — comes the moose, or 
broad-horned elk. It is a strange, uncouth-looking 
beast, with very long legs, short, thick neck, a big, un- 
gainly head, a swollen nose, and huge shovel horns. Its 
home is in the cold, wet pine and spruce forests which 
stretch from the subarctic region of Canada south- 
ward in certain places across our frontier. Two cen- 
turies ago it was found as far south as Massachusetts. 
It has now been exterminated from its former haunts 
in northern New York and Vermont, and is on the 
point of vanishing from northern Michigan. It is still 
found in northern Maine and northeastern Minnesota 
and in portions of northern Idaho and Washington; 
while along the Rockies it extends its range southward 
through western Montana to northwestern Wyoming, 
south of the Tetons. In 1884 I saw the fresh hide of 
one that was killed in the Bighorn Mountains. 

The wapiti, or round-horned elk, like the bison, and 

15 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

unlike the moose, had its centre of abundance in the 
United States, though extending northward into Can- 
ada. Originally its range reached from ocean to ocean 
and it went in herds of thousands of individuals; but 
it has suffered more from the persecution of hunters 
than any other game except the bison. By the begin- 
ning of this century it had been exterminated in most 
localities east of the Mississippi; but a few lingered 
on for many years in the AUeghanies. Colonel Cecil 
Clay informs me that an Indian whom he knew killed 
one in Pennsylvania in 1869. A very few still exist 
here and there in northern Michigan and Minnesota, 
and in one or two spots on the western boundary of 
Nebraska and the Dakotas; but it is now properly a 
beast of the wooded Western mountains. It is still 
plentiful in western Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, 
and in parts of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. 
Though not as large as the moose, it is the most beauti- 
ful and stately of all animals of the deer kind, and its 
antlers are marvels of symmetrical grandeur. 

The woodland caribou is inferior to the wapiti both 
in size and symmetry. The tips of the many branches 
of its long, irregular antlers are slightly palmated. Its 
range is the same as that of the moose, save that it 
does not go so far southward. Its hoofs are long and 
round; even larger than the long, oval hoofs of the 
moose, and much larger than those of the wapiti. The 
tracks of all three can be told apart at a glance, and 
cannot be mistaken for the footprints of other game. 
Wapiti tracks, however, look much like those of year- 
ling and two-year-old cattle, unless the ground is steep 
or muddy, in which case the marks of the false hoofs 
appear, the joints of wapiti being more flexible than 
those of domestic stock. 

16 



THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS 

The whitetail deer is now, as it always has been, the 
best known and most abundant of American big game, 
and though its numbers have been greatly thinned it 
is still found in almost every State of the Union. The 
common blacktail or mule deer, which has likewise been 
sadly thinned in numbers, though once extraordinarily 
abundant, extends from the great plains to the Pacific; 
but is supplanted on the Puget Sound coast by the 
Columbian blacktail. The delicate, heart-shaped foot- 
prints of all three are nearly indistinguishable; when 
the animal is running the hoof points are, of course, 
separated. The track of the antelope is more oval, 
growing squarer with age. Mountain-sheep leave foot- 
marks of a squarer shape, the points of the hoof making 
little indentations in the soil, well apart, even when the 
animal is only walking; and a yearling's track is not 
unlike that made by a big prongbuck when striding 
rapidly with the toes well apart. White-goat tracks 
are also square, and as large as those of the sheep; but 
there is less indentation of the hoof points, which come 
nearer together. 

The antelope, or prongbuck, was once found in 
abundance from the eastern edge of the great plains 
to the Pacific, but it has everywhere diminished in 
numbers, and has been exterminated along the eastern 
and western borders of its former range. The bighorn, 
or mountain-sheep, is found in the Rocky Mountains 
from northern Mexico to Alaska; and in the United 
States from the Coast and Cascade ranges to the Bad 
Lands of the western edges of the Dakotas, wherever 
there are mountain chains or tracts of rugged hills. 
It was never very abundant, and, though it has be- 
come less so, it has held its own better than most 
game. The white goat, however, alone among our game 

17 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

animals, has positively increased in numbers since the 
advent of settlers; because white hunters rarely follow 
it, and the Indians who once sought its skin for robes 
now use blankets instead. Its true home is in Alaska 
and Canada, but it crosses our borders along the lines 
of the Rockies and Cascades, and a few small isolated 
colonies are found here and there southward to Cali- 
fornia and New Mexico. 

The cougar and wolf, once common throughout the 
United States, have now completely disappeared from 
all save the wildest regions. The black bear holds its 
own better; it was never found on the great plains. 
The huge grizzly ranges from the great plains to the 
Pacific. The little peccary, or Mexican wild hog, 
merely crosses our southern border. 

The finest hunting-ground in America was, and in- 
deed is, the mountainous region of western Montana 
and northwestern Wyoming. In this high, cold land 
of lofty mountains, deep forests, and open prairies, 
with its beautiful lakes and rapid rivers, all the species 
of big game mentioned above, except the peccary and 
Columbian blacktail, are to be found. Until 1880 they 
were very abundant, and they are still, with the ex- 
ception of the bison, fairly plentiful. On most of the 
long hunting expeditions which I made away from my 
ranch, I went into this region. 

The bulk of my hunting has been done in the cattle 
country, near my ranch on the Little Missouri, and 
in the adjoining lands round the lower Powder and 
Yellowstone. Until 1881 the valley of the Little Mis- 
souri was fairly thronged with game, and was absolutely 
unchanged in any respect from its original condition 
of primeval wildness. With the incoming of the stock- 
men all this changed, and the game was wofully 

18 



THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS 

slaughtered; but plenty of deer and antelope, a few 
sheep and bear, and an occasional elk are still left. 

Since the professional hunters have vanished with 
the vast herds of game on w^hich they preyed, the life 
of the ranchman is that which yields most chance of 
hunting. Life on a cattle-ranch, on the great plains 
or among the foot-hills of the high mountains, has a 
peculiar attraction for those hardy, adventurous spirits 
who take most kindly to a vigorous out-of-door exist- 
ence, and who are therefore most apt to care passion- 
ately for the chase of big game. The free ranchman 
lives in a wild, lonely country, and exactly as he breaks 
and tames his own horses and guards and tends his 
own branded herds, so he takes the keenest enjoyment 
in the chase, which is to him not merely the pleasantest 
of sports, but also a means of adding materially to his 
comforts, and often his only method of providing him- 
self with fresh meat. 

Hunting in the wilderness is of all pastimes the most 
attractive, and it is doubly so when not carried on 
merely as a pastime. Shooting over a private game- 
preserve is of course in no way to be compared to it. 
The wilderness hunter must not only show skill in the 
use of the rifle and address in finding and approaching 
game, but he must also show the qualities of hardihood, 
self-reliance, and resolution needed for effectively grap- 
pling with his wild surroundings. The fact that the 
hunter needs the game, both for its meat and for its 
hide, undoubtedly adds a zest to the pursuit. Among 
the hunts which I have most enjoyed were those made 
when I was engaged in getting in the winter's stock 
of meat for the ranch, or was keeping some party of 
cowboys supplied with game from day to day. 



19 



II 



HUNTING FROM THE RANCH; THE BLACKTAIL 

DEER 

No life can be pleasanter than life during the months 
of fall on a ranch in the northern cattle country. The 
weather is cool; in the evenings and on the rare rainy 
days we are glad to sit by the great fireplace, with its 
roaring cottonwood logs. But on most days not a cloud 
dims the serene splendor of the sky; and the fresh pure 
air is clear with the wonderful clearness of the high 
plains. We are in the saddle from morning to night. 

The long, low, roomy ranch-house, of clean hewed 
logs, is as comfortable as it is bare and plain. We fare 
simply but well; for the wife of my foreman makes 
excellent bread and cake, and there are plenty of po- 
tatoes, grown in the forlorn little garden-patch on the 
bottom. We also have jellies and jams, made from 
wild plums and buffalo-berries ; and all the milk we can 
drink. For meat we depend on our rifles; and, with 
an occasional interlude of ducks or prairie-chickens, 
the mainstay of each meal is venison, roasted, broiled, 
or fried. 

Sometimes we shoot the deer when we happen 
on them while about our ordinary business — indeed, 
throughout the time that I have lived on the ranch, 
very many of the deer and antelope I killed were thus 
obtained. Of course while doing the actual round-up 
work it is impossible to attend to anything else; but 
we generally carry rifles while riding after the saddle 
band in the early morning, while visiting the line 

20 



HUNTING FROM THE RANCH 

camps, or while in the saddle among the cattle on the 
range, and get many a shot in this fashion. 

In the fall of 1890 some friends came to my ranch; 
and one day we took them to see a round-up. The 
O X, a Texan-steer outfit, had sent a couple of wagons 
to work down the river, after beef-cattle, and one of 
my men had gone along to gather any of my own scat- 
tered steers that were ready for shipping and to brand 
the late calves. There were perhaps a dozen riders 
with the wagons; and they were camped for the day 
on a big bottom where Blacktail and Whitetail creeks 
open into the river, several miles below my ranch. 

At dawn one of the men rode off to bring in the 
saddle band. The rest of us were up by sunrise; and 
as we stood on the veranda under the shimmering 
cottonwood-trees, revelling in the blue of the cloudless 
sky and drinking in the cool air before going to break- 
fast, we saw the motley-colored string of ponies file 
down from the opposite bank of the river and splash 
across the broad, shallow ford in front of the ranch- 
house. Cantering and trotting, the band swept toward 
the high, round horse corral, in the open glade to the 
rear of the house. Guided by the jutting wing which 
stuck out at right angles, they entered the open gate, 
which was promptly closed by the cowboy who had 
driven them in. 

After breakfast we strolled over to the corral, with 
our lariats, and, standing by the snubbing-post in the 
middle, roped the horses we wished for the party — 
some that were gentle, and others that were not. Then 
every man saddled his horse; and at the moment of 
mounting for the start there was, as always, a thrill 
of mild excitement, each rider hoping that his own 
horse would not buck and that his neighbor's would. 

21 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

I had no young horses on the ranch at the time; but 
a number of the older ones still possessed some of the 
least amiable traits of their youth. 

Once in the saddle we rode off downriver, along 
the bottoms, crossing the stream again and again. We 
went in Indian file, as is necessary among the trees and 
in broken ground, following the cattle-trails — which 
themselves had replaced or broadened the game paths 
that alone crossed the plateaus and bottoms when my 
ranch-house was first built. Now we crossed open 
reaches of coarse grass, thinly sprinkled with large, 
brittle cottonwood-trees, their branches torn and splin- 
tered; now we wound our way through a dense jungle 
where the gray, thorny buffalo bushes, spangled with 
brilliant red-berry clusters, choked the spaces between 
the thick-growing box-alders; and again the sure- 
footed ponies scrambled down one cut bank and up 
another, through seemingly impossible rifts, or with 
gingerly footsteps trod a path which cut the side of a 
butte or overhung a bluff. Sometimes we racked, or 
shacked along at the fox-trot which is the cow-pony's 
ordinary gait; and sometimes we loped or galloped 
and ran. 

At last we came to the ford beyond which the riders 
of the round-up had made their camp. In the bygone 
days of the elk and buffalo, when our branded cattle 
were first driven thus far north, this ford had been 
dangerous from quicksand ; but the cattle, ever crossing 
and recrossing, had trodden down and settled the sand, 
and had found out the firm places; so that it was now 
easy to get over. 

Close beyond the trees on the farther bank stood the 
two round-up wagons; near by was the cook's fire, 
in a trench, so that it might not spread; the bedding 

22 



HUNTING FROM THE RANCH 

of the riders and horse-wranglers lay scattered about, 
each roll of blankets wrapped and corded in a stout 
canvas sheet. The cook was busy about the fire; the 
night wrangler was snatching an hour or two's sleep 
under one of the wagons. Half a mile away, on the 
plain of sage-brush and long grass, the day wrangler 
was guarding the grazing or resting horse-herd, of over 
a hundred head. Still farther distant, at the mouth 
of a ravine, was the day herd of cattle, two or three 
cowboys watching it as they lolled drowsily in their 
saddles. The other riders were off on circles to bring 
in cattle to the round-up; they were expected every 
moment. 

With the ready hospitality always shown in a cow 
camp we were pressed to alight and take dinner, or 
at least a lunch; and accordingly we jumped off our 
horses and sat down. Our tin plates were soon heaped 
with fresh beef, tomatoes, rice, and potatoes, all very 
good; for the tall, bearded, scrawny cook knew his 
work, and the OX outfit always fed its men well — 
and saw that they worked well too. 

Before noon the circle riders began to appear on the 
plain, coming out of the ravines, and scrambling down 
the steep hills, singly or in twos and threes. They 
herded before them bunches of cattle, of varying size; 
these were driven together and left in charge of a couple 
of cow-punchers. The other men rode to the wagon 
to get a hasty dinner — lithe, sinewy fellows, with 
weather-roughened faces and fearless eyes; their broad 
felt hats flapped as they galloped, and their spurs and 
bridle-chains jingled. They rode well, with long stir- 
rups, sitting straight in the deep stock-saddles, and 
their wiry ponies show^ed no signs of fatigue from the 
morning's ride. 

23 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

The horse-wrangler soon drove the saddle band to 
the wagons, where it was caught in a quickly impro- 
vised rope corral. The men roped fresh horses, fitted 
for the cutting-work round the herd, with its attendant 
furious galloping and flash-like turning and twisting. 
In a few minutes all were in the saddle again and riding 
toward the cattle. 

Then began that scene of excitement and turmoil, 
and seeming confusion, but real method and orderli- 
ness, so familiar to all who have engaged in stock-grow- 
ing on the great plains. The riders gathered in a wide 
ring round the herd of uneasy cattle, and a couple of 
men rode into their midst to cut out the beef steers 
and the cows that were followed by unbranded calves. 
As soon as the animal was picked out the cowboy began 
to drive it slowly toward the outside of the herd, and 
when it was near the edge he suddenly raced it into 
the open. The beast would then start at full speed 
and try to double back among its fellows; while the 
trained cow-pony followed like a shadow, heading it 
off at every turn. The riders round that part of the 
herd opened out and the chosen animal was speedily 
hurried off to some spot a few hundred yards distant, 
where it was left under charge of another cowboy. 
The latter at first had his hands full in preventing his 
charge from rejoining the herd; for cattle dread nothing 
so much as being separated from their comrades. How- 
ever, as soon as two or three others were driven out, 
enough to form a little bunch, it became a much easier 
matter to hold the " cut," as it is called. The cows 
and calves were put in one place, the beeves in another; 
the latter were afterward run into the day herd. 

Meanwhile from time to time some clean-limbed 
young steer or heifer, able to run like an antelope and 

24 



HUNTING FROM THE RANCH 

double like a jack-rabbit, tried to break out of the herd 
that was being worked, when the nearest cowboy 
hurried in pursuit at top speed and brought it back, 
after a headlong, breakneck race, in which no heed 
was paid to brush, fallen timber, prairie-dog holes, or 
cut banks. The dust rose in little whirling clouds, and 
through it dashed bolting cattle and galloping cow- 
boys, hither and thither, while the air was filled with 
the shouts and laughter of the men and the bellowing 
of the herd. 

As soon as the herd was worked it was turned loose, 
while the cows and calves were driven over to a large 
corral, where the branding was done. A fire w^as 
speedily kindled, and in it were laid the branding-irons 
of the different outfits represented on the round-up. 
Then two of the best ropers rode into the corral and 
began to rope the calves, round the hind legs by prefer- 
ence, but sometimes round the head. The other men 
dismounted to "wrestle" and brand them. Once roped 
the calf, bawling and struggling, was swiftly dragged 
near the fire, where one or two of the calf-wrestlers 
grappled with and threw the kicking, plunging little 
beast, and held it while it was branded. If the calf 
was large the wrestlers had hard work; and one or 
two young maverick bulls — that is, unbranded yearling 
bulls, which had been passed by in the round-ups of 
the preceding year — fought viciously, bellowing and 
charging, and driving some of the men up the sides of 
the corral, to the boisterous delight of the others. 

After watching the work for a little while we left 
and rode homeward. Instead of going along the river- 
bottoms we struck back over the buttes. From time 
to time we came out on some sharp bluff overlooking 
the river. From these points of vantage we could see 

25 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

for several miles up and down the valley of the Little 
Missouri. The level bottoms were walled in by rows 
of sheer cliffs and steep, grassy slopes. These bluff 
lines were from a quarter of a mile to a mile apart; 
they did not run straight, but in a succession of curves, 
so as to look like the halves of many amphitheatres. 
Between them the river swept in great bends from side 
to side; the wide bed, brimful during the time of fresh- 
ets, now held but a thin stream of water. Some of the 
bottoms were covered only with grass and sage-brush; 
others were a dense jungle of trees; while yet others 
looked like parks, the cottonwoods growing in curved 
lines or in clumps scattered here and there. 

On our way we came across a bunch of cattle, 
among which the sharp eyes of my foreman detected 
a maverick two-year-old heifer. He and one of the 
cowboys at once got down their ropes and rode after 
her; the rest of us first rounding up the bunch so as 
to give a fair start. After a sharp run one of the men, 
swinging his lariat round his head, got close up; in a 
second or two the noose settled round the heifer's neck, 
and as it became taut she was brought to with a jerk; 
immediately afterward the other man made his throw 
and cleverly heeled her. In a trice the red heifer was 
stretched helpless on the ground, the two fierce little 
ponies, a pinto and a buckskin, keeping her down on 
their own account, tossing their heads and backing so 
that the ropes which led from the saddle-horns to her 
head and hind feet never slackened. Then we kindled 
a fire; one of the cinch rings was taken off to serve 
as a branding-iron, and the heifer speedily became our 
property — for she was on our range. 

When we reached the ranch it was still early, and 
after finishing dinner it lacked over an hour of sundown. 

26 



HUNTING FROM THE RANCH 

Accordingly we went for another ride; and I carried 
my rifle. We started up a winding coulee which opened 
back of the ranch-house; and after half an hour's can- 
ter clambered up the steep head-ravines and emerged 
on a high ridge which went westward, straight as an 
arrow, to the main divide between the Little Missouri 
and the Big Beaver. Along this narrow, grassy crest 
we lopedi and galloped ; we were so high that we could 
look far and wide over all the country round about. 
To the southward, across a dozen leagues of rolling 
and broken prairie, loomed Sentinel Butte, the chief 
landmark of all that region. Behind us, beyond the 
river, rose the weird chaos of Bad Lands which at this 
point lie for many miles east of the Little Missouri. 
Their fantastic outlines were marked against the sky 
as sharply as if cut with a knife; their grim and for- 
bidding desolation warmed into wonderful beauty by 
the light of the dying sun. On our right, as we loped 
onward, the land sank away in smooth green-clad slopes 
and valleys; on our left it fell in sheer walls. Ahead 
of us the sun was sinking behind a mass of blood-red 
clouds; and on either hand the flushed skies were 
changing their tint to a hundred hues of opal and 
amethyst. Our tireless little horses sprang under us, 
thrilling with life; we were riding through a fairy world 
of beauty and color and limitless space and freedom. 

Suddenly a short hundred yards in front three black- 
tail leaped out of a little glen and crossed our path, 
with the peculiar bounding gait of their kind. At once 
I sprang from my horse and, kneeling, fired at the last 
and largest of the three. My bullet sped too far back, 
but struck near the hip, and the crippled deer went 
slowly down a ravine. Running over a hillock to cut 
it off, I found it in some brush a few hundred yards 

27 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

beyond, and finished it with a second ball. Quickly 
dressing it, I packed it on my horse, and trotted back, 
leading him; an hour afterward saw through the waning 
light the quaint, homelike outlines of the ranch-house. 
After all, however, blacktail can only at times be 
picked up by chance in this way. More often it is 
needful to kill them by fair still-hunting, among the 
hills or wooded mountains where they delight to dwell. 
If hunted, they speedily become wary. By choice they 
live in such broken country that it is difiicult to pur- 
sue them with hounds; and they are by no means such 
water-loving animals as whitetail. On the other hand, 
the land in which they dwell is very favorable to the 
still-hunter who does not rely merely on stealth but 
who can walk and shoot well. They do not go on the 
open prairie, and, if possible, they avoid deep forests, 
while, being good climbers, they like hills. In the 
mountains, therefore, they keep to what is called park 
country, where glades alternate with open groves. On 
the great plains they avoid both the heavily timbered 
river-bottoms and the vast treeless stretches of level 
or rolling grass-land; their chosen abode being the 
broken and hilly region, scantily wooded, which skirts 
almost every plains river and forms a belt, sometimes 
very narrow, sometimes many miles in breadth, be- 
tween the alluvial bottom-land and the prairies beyond. 
In these Bad Lands dwarfed pines and cedars grow in 
the canyon-like ravines and among the high, steep hills ; 
there are also basins and winding coulees, filled with 
brush and shrubbery and small elm or ash. In all 
such places the blacktail loves to make its home. 

I have not often hunted blacktail in the mountains, 
because while there I was generally after larger game; 
but round my ranch I have killed more of them than 

28 



HUNTING FROM THE RANCH 

of any other game, and for me their chase has always 
possessed a pecuHar charm. We hunt them in the love- 
liest season of the year, the fall and early winter, when 
it is keen pleasure merely to live out-of-doors. Some- 
times we make a regular trip of several days' duration, 
taking the ranch wagon, with or without a tent, to 
some rugged, little-disturbed spot where the deer are 
plenty; perhaps returning with eight or ten carcasses, 
or even more — enough to last a long while in cold 
weather. We often make such trips while laying in our 
winter supply of meat. 

At other times we hunt directly from the ranch -house. 
We catch our horses overnight, and are in the saddle 
for an all-day's hunt long before the first streak of dawn, 
possibly not returning until some hours after nightfall. 
The early morning and late evening are the best time 
for hunting game, except in regions where it is hardly 
ever molested, and where in consequence it moves about 
more or less throughout the day. 

During the rut, which begins in September, the deer 
are in constant motion, and are often found in bands. 
The necks of the bucks swell and their sides grow gaunt; 
they chase the does all night, and their flesh becomes 
strong and stringy — far inferior to that of the barren 
does and yearlings. The old bucks then wage desperate 
conflicts with one another and bully their smaller 
brethren unmercifully. Unlike the elk, the blacktail, 
like the white tail, are generally silent in the rutting 
season. They occasionally grunt when fighting; and 
once, on a fall evening, I heard two young bucks barking 
in a ravine back of my ranch-house, and crept up and 
shot them; but this was a wholly exceptional instance. 

At this time I hunt on foot, only using the horse to 
carry me to and from the hunting-ground; for while 

29 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

rutting, the deer, being restless, do not try to escape 
observation by lying still, and on the other hand are 
apt to wander about and so are easily seen from a dis- 
tance. WTien I have reached a favorable place I picket 
my horse and go from vantage point to vantage point, 
carefully scanning the hillsides, ravines, and brush 
coulees from every spot that affords a wide outlook. 
The quarry once seen, it may be a matter of hours, or 
only of minutes, to approach it, according as the wind 
and cover are or are not favorable. The walks for many 
miles over the hills, the exercise of constant watchful- 
ness, the excitement of the actual stalk, and the still 
greater excitement of the shot, combine to make still- 
hunting the blacktail, in the sharp fall weather, one 
of the most attractive of hardy outdoor sports. Then 
after the long, stumbling walk homeward, through the 
cool gloom of the late evening, comes the meal of smok- 
ing venison and milk and bread, and the sleepy rest, 
lying on the bearskins, or sitting in the rocking-chair 
before the roaring fire, while the icy wind moans outside. 
Earlier in the season, while the does are still nursing 
the fawns and until the bucks have cleaned the last ves- 
tiges of velvet from their antlers, the deer lie very close 
and wander round as little as may be. In the spring 
and early summer, in the ranch country, we hunt big 
game very little, and then only antelope; because in 
hunting antelope there is no danger of killing aught 
but bucks. About the first of August we begin to hunt 
blacktail, but do not kill does until a month later — and 
then only when short of meat. In the early weeks of 
the deer season we frequently do even the actual hunting 
on horseback instead of on foot; because the deer at 
this time rarely appear in view, so as to afford chance 
for a stalk, and yet are reluctant to break cover until 

30 



HUNTING FROM THE RANCH 

very closely approached. In consequence we keep on 
our horses, and so get over much more ground than on 
foot, beating through or beside all likely-looking cover, 
with the object of jumping the deer close by. Under 
such circumstances bucks sometimes lie until almost 
trodden on. 

One afternoon in mid-August, when the ranch was 
entirely out of meat, I started with one of my cow- 
hands, Merrifield, to kill a deer. We were on a couple 
of stout, quiet ponies, accustomed to firing and to 
packing game. After riding a mile or two down the 
bottoms we left the river and struck off up a winding 
valley, which led back among the hills. In a short 
while we were in a blacktail country, and began to keep 
a sharp lookout for game, riding parallel to, but some 
little distance from, one another. The sun, beating 
down through the clear air, was very hot; the brown 
slopes of short grass and, still more, the white clay 
walls of the Bad Lands, threw the heat rays in our faces. 
We skirted closely all likely-looking spots, such as the 
heavy brush-patches in the bottoms of the winding 
valleys, and the groves of ash and elm in the basins 
and pockets flanking the high plateaus; sometimes we 
followed a cattle trail which ran down the middle of a 
big washout, and again we rode along the brink of a 
deep cedar canyon. After a while we came to a coulee 
with a small muddy pool at its mouth; and round this 
pool there was much fresh deer sign. The coulee was 
but half a mile long, heading into and flanked by the 
spurs of some steep, bare hills. Its bottom, which was 
fifty yards or so across, was choked by a dense growth 
of brush, chiefly thorny bullberries, while the sides 
were formed by cut banks twelve or fifteen feet high. 
My companion rode up the middle, while I scrambled 

31 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

up one of the banks and, dismounting, led my horse 
along its edge, that I might have a clear shot at 
whatever we roused. We went nearly to the head, and 
then the cowboy reined up and shouted to me that he 
*' guessed there were no deer in the coulee." Instantly 
there w^as a smashing in the young trees midway be- 
tween us, and I caught a glimpse of a blacktail buck 
speeding round a shoulder of the cut bank; and though 
I took a hurried shot I missed. However, another buck 
promptly jumped up from the same place; evidently 
the two had lain secure in their day-beds, shielded by 
the dense cover, while the cowboy rode by them, and 
had only risen when he halted and began to call to me 
across them. This second buck, a fine fellow with big 
antlers not yet clear of velvet, luckily ran up the op- 
posite bank, and I got a fair shot at him as he galloped 
broadside to me along the open hillside. Wlien I fired 
he rolled over with a broken back. As we came up he 
bleated loudly, an unusual thing for a buck to do. 

Now, these two bucks must have heard us coming, 
but reckoned on our passing them by without seeing 
them; which w^e would have done had they not been 
startled when the cowboy halted and spoke. Later in 
the season they would probably not have let us approach 
them, but would have run as soon as they knew of our 
presence. Of course, however, even later in the season, 
a man may by chance stumble across a deer close by. 
I remember one occasion when my ranch partner, 
Robert Munro Ferguson, and I almost corralled an 
unlucky deer in a small washout. 

It was October, and our meat supply unexpectedly 
gave out; on our ranch, as on most ranches, an oc- 
casional meat famine of three or four days intervenes 
between the periods of plenty. So Ferguson and I 

32 



HUNTING FROM THE RANCH 

started together, to get venison; and at the end of 
two days' hard work, leaving the ranch by sunrise, 
riding to the hunting-grounds and tramping steadily 
until dark, we succeeded. The weather was stormy 
and there were continual gusts of wind and of cold rain, 
sleet, or snow. We hunted through a large tract of 
rough and broken country, six or eight miles from the 
ranch. As often happens in such wild weather, the deer 
were wild too; they were watchful and were on the 
move all the time. We saw a number, but either they 
ran off before we could get a shot, or if we did fire it 
was at such a distance or under such unfavorable 
circumstances that we missed. At last, as we were 
plodding drearily up a bare valley, the sodden mud 
caking round our shoes, we roused three deer from the 
mouth of a short washout but a few paces from us. 
Two bounded off; the third by mistake rushed into 
the washout, where he found himself in a regular trap 
and was promptly shot by my companion. We slung 
the carcass on a pole and carried it down to where 
we had left the horses; and then we loped homeward, 
bending to the cold, slanting rain. 

Although in places where it is much persecuted the 
blacktail is a shy and wary beast, the successful pur- 
suit of which taxes to the uttermost the skill and energy 
of the hunter, yet, like the elk, if little molested it 
often shows astonishing tameness and even stupidity. 
In the Rockies I have sometimes come on blacktail 
within a very short distance, which would merely stare 
at me, then trot off a few yards, turn and stare again, 
and wait for several minutes before really taking alarm. 
WTiat is much more extraordinary, I have had the same 
thing happen to me in certain little-hunted localities 
in the neighborhood of my ranch, even of recent years. 

33 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

In the fall of 1890, 1 was riding down a canyon-coulee 
with my foreman, Sylvane Ferris, and a young friend 
from Boston, when we almost rode over a barren black- 
tail doe. She only ran some fifty yards, round a corner 
of the coulee, and then turned and stood until we ran 
forward and killed her— for we were in need of fresh 
meat. One October, a couple of years before this, my 
cousin West Roosevelt and I took a trip with the 
wagon to a very wild and rugged country, some twenty 
miles from the ranch. We found that the deer had 
evidently been but little disturbed. One day while 
scrambling down a steep, brushy hill, leading my horse, 
I came close on a doe and fawn; they merely looked at 
me with curiosity for some time, and then sauntered 
slowly off, remaining within shot for at least five min- 
utes. Fortunately we had plenty of meat at the time, 
and there was no necessity to harm the graceful crea- 
tures. A few days later we came on two bucks sunning 
themselves in the bottom of a valley. My companion 
killed one. The other was lying but a dozen rods off; 
yet it never moved, until several shots had been fired 
at the first. It was directly under me, and, in my 
anxiety to avoid overshooting, to my horror I com- 
mitted the opposite fault, and away went the buck. 

Every now and then any one will make most unac- 
countable misses. A few days after thus losing the 
buck I spent nearly twenty cartridges in butchering 
an unfortunate yearling, and only killed it at all be- 
cause it became so bewildered by the firing that it 
hardly tried to escape. I never could tell why I used 
so many cartridges to such little purpose. During the 
next fortnight I killed seven deer without making a 
single miss, though some of the shots were rather 
difficult. 

34 



Ill 

THE WHITETAIL DEER; AND THE BLACKTAIL OF 

THE COLUMBU 

The whitetail deer is much the commonest game 
animal of the United States, being still found, though 
generally in greatly diminished numbers, throughout 
most of the Union. It is a shrewd, wary, knowing 
beast; but it owes its prolonged stay in the land chiefly 
to the fact that it is an inveterate skulker and fond of 
the thickest cover. Accordingly it usually has to be 
killed by stealth and stratagem, and not by fair, manly 
hunting; being quite easily slain in any one of half a 
dozen unsportsmanlike ways. In consequence I care 
less for its chase than for the chase of any other kind of 
American big game. Yet in the few places where it 
dwells in open, hilly forests and can be killed by still- 
hunting as if it were a blacktail, or, better still, where 
the nature of the ground is such that it can be run 
down in fair chase on horseback, either with grey- 
hounds, or with a pack of trackhounds, it yields splendid 
sport. 

Killing a deer from a boat while the poor animal is 
swimming in the water, or on snowshoes as it flounders 
helplessly in the deep drifts, can only be justified on 
the plea of hunger. This is also true of lying in wait 
at a lick. Whoever indulges in any of these methods, 
save from necessity, is a butcher pure and simple, and 
has no business in the company of true sportsmen. 

Fire-hunting may be placed in the same category; 
yet it is possibly allowable under exceptional circum- 
stances to indulge in a fire-hunt, if only for the sake of 

35 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

seeing the wilderness by torchlight. My first attempt 
at big-game shooting, when a boy, was "jacking" for 
deer in the Adirondacks, on a pond or small lake sur- 
rounded by the grand northern forests of birch and 
beech, pine, spruce, and fir. I killed a spike-buck; and 
while I have never been willing to kill another in this 
manner, I cannot say that I regret having once had 
the experience. The ride over the glassy, black water, 
the witchcraft of such silent progress through the mys- 
tery of the night, cannot but impress one. There is 
pleasure in the mere buoyant gliding of the birch-bark 
canoe, with its curved bow and stern; nothing else 
that floats possesses such grace, such frail and delicate 
beauty, as this true craft of the wilderness, which is 
as much a creature of the wild woods as the deer and 
bear themselves. The light streaming from the bark 
lantern in the bow cuts a glaring lane through the 
gloom; in it all objects stand out like magic, shining 
for a moment white and ghastly and then vanishing 
into the impenetrable darkness; while all the time the 
paddler in the stern makes not so much as a ripple, 
and there is never a sound but the occasional splash 
of a muskrat, or the moaning uloo-oo, uloo-uloo of an 
owl from the deep forests; and at last perchance the 
excitement of a shot at a buck, standing at gaze, with 
luminous eyeballs. 

The most common method of killing the whitetail 
is by hounding; that is, by driving it with hounds past 
runways where hunters are stationed — for all wild 
animals when on the move prefer to follow certain 
definite routes. This is a legitimate, but inferior, kind 
of sport. 

However, even killing driven deer may be good fun 
at certain times. Most of the whitetail we kill round 

36 



THE WHITETAIL DEER 

the ranch are obtained in this fashion. On the Little 
Missouri — as throughout the plains country generally 
— these deer cling to the big wooded river-bottoms, 
while the blacktail are found in the broken country 
back from the river. The tangled mass of cotton woods, 
box-alders, and thorny bullberry bushes which cover 
the bottoms afford the deer a nearly secure shelter 
from the still-hunter; and it is only by the aid of 
hounds that they can be driven from their wooded 
fastnesses. They hold their own better than any other 
game. The great herds of buffalo, and the bands of 
elk, have vanished completely ; the swarms of antelope 
and blacktail have been wofully thinned; but the 
whitetail, which were never found in such throngs as 
either buffalo or elk, blacktail or antelope, have suffered 
far less from the advent of the white hunters, ranchmen, 
and settlers. They are of course not as plentiful as 
formerly; but some are still to be found in almost all 
their old haunts. ^Vhere the river, winding between 
rows of high buttes, passes my ranch-house, there is a 
long succession of heavily wooded bottoms ; and on all 
of these, even on the one whereon the house itself 
stands, there are a good many whitetail yet left. 

WTien we take a day's regular hunt we usually 
wander afar, either to the hills after blacktail or to the 
open prairie after antelope. But if we are short of meat 
and yet have no time for a regular hunt, being perhaps 
able to spare only a couple of hours after the day's 
work is over, then all hands turn out to drive a bottom 
for whitetail. We usually have one or two track-hounds 
at the ranch; true Southern deerhounds, black and 
tan, with lop ears and hanging lips, their wrinkled faces 
stamped with an expression of almost ludicrous melan- 
choly. They are not fast, and have none of the alert 

37 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

look of the pied and spotted modern foxhound; but 
their noses are very keen, their voices deep and mellow, 
and they are wonderfully stanch on a trail. 

All is bustle and laughter as we start on such a hunt. 
The baying hounds bound about as the rifles are taken 
down; the wiry ponies are roped out of the corral, and 
each broad-hatted hunter swings joyfully into the 
saddle. If the pony bucks or "acts mean" the rider 
finds that his rifle adds a new element of interest to 
the performance, which is of course hailed with loud 
delight by all the men on quiet horses. Then we splash 
off over the river, scramble across the faces of the bluffs, 
or canter along the winding cattle-paths, through the 
woods, until we come to the bottom we intend to hunt. 
Here a hunter is stationed at each runway along which 
it is deemed likely that the deer will pass; and one 
man, who has remained on horseback, starts into the 
cover with the hounds; occasionally this horseman 
himself, skilled, as most cowboys are, in the use of the 
revolver, gets a chance to kill a deer. The deep baying 
of the hounds speedily gives warning that the game 
is afoot; and the watching hunters, who have already 
hid their horses carefully, look to their rifles. Some- 
times the deer comes far ahead of the dogs, running 
very swiftly with neck stretched straight out; and if 
the cover is thick such an animal is hard to hit. At 
other times, especially if the quarry is a young buck, 
it plays along not very far ahead of its baying pursuers, 
bounding and strutting with head up and white flag 
flaunting. If struck hard, down goes the flag at once, 
and the deer plunges into a staggering run, while the 
hounds yell with eager ferocity as they follow the bloody 
trail. Usually we do not have to drive more than one 
or two bottoms before getting a deer, which is forth- 

38 



THE WHITETAIL DEER 

with packed behind one of the riders, as the distance 
is not great, and home we come in triumph. Sometimes, 
however, we fail to find game, or the deer take un- 
guarded passes, or the shot is missed. Occasionally I 
have killed deer on these hunts; generally I have 
merely sat still a long while, listened to the hounds, 
and at last heard somebody else shoot. In fact such 
hunting, though good enough fun if only tried rarely, 
would speedily pall if followed at all regularly. 

Personally the chief excitement I have had in con- 
nection therewith has arisen from some antic of my 
horse; a half-broken bronco is apt to become unnerved 
when a man with a gun tries to climb on him in a 
hurry. On one hunt in 1890 I rode a wild animal 
named ^Miitefoot. He had been a confirmed and very 
bad bucker three years before, when I had him in my 
string on the round-up; but had grown quieter with 
years. Nevertheless I found he had some fire left; for 
a hasty vault into the saddle on my part was followed 
on his by some very resolute pitching. I lost my rifle 
and hat, and my revolver and knife were bucked out 
of my belt; but I kept my seat all right, and finally 
got his head up and mastered him without letting him 
throw himself over backward, a trick he sometimes 
practised. Nevertheless, in the first jump, when I was 
taken unawares, I strained myself across the loins, and 
did not get entirely over it for six months. 

To shoot running game with the rifle it is always 
necessary to be a good and quick marksman; for it is 
never easy to kill an animal, when in rapid motion, 
with a single buUet. If on a runway a man who is a 
fairly skilful rifleman has plenty of time for a clear 
shot, on open ground, at comparatively short distance, 
say under eighty yards, and if the deer is cantering, 

39 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

he ought to hit; at least I generally do under such 
circumstances, by remembering to hold well forward; 
in fact, just in front of the deer's chest. But I do not 
always kill by any means; quite often when I thought 
I held far enough ahead, my bullet has gone into the 
buck's hips or loins. However, one great feature in 
the use of dogs is that they enable one almost always 
to recover wounded game. 

If the animal is running at full speed a long distance 
off, the difficulty of hitting is of course very much in- 
creased; and if the country is open the value of a 
repeating rifle is then felt. If the game is bounding 
over logs or dodging through underbrush, the difficulty 
is again increased. Moreover, the natural gait of the 
different kinds of game must be taken into account. 
Of course the larger kinds, such as elk and moose, are 
the easiest to hit; then comes the antelope, in spite of 
its swiftness, and the sheep, because of the evenness 
of their running; then the white tail, with its rolling 
gallop; and last and hardest of all, the blacktail, be- 
cause of its extraordinary stiff -legged bounds. 

Sometimes on a runway the difficulty is not that the 
game is too far, but that it is too close; for a deer may 
actually almost jump on the hunter, surprising him 
out of all accuracy of aim. Once something of the 
sort happened to me. 

Winter was just beginning. I had been off with the 
ranch wagon on a last round-up of the beef steers; 
and had suffered a good deal, as one always does on 
these cold-weather round-ups, sleeping out in the snow, 
wrapped up in blankets and tarpaulin, with no tent and 
generally no fire. Moreover, I became so weary of the 
interminable length of the nights that I almost ceased 
to mind the freezing misery of standing night guard 

40 



THE WHITETAIL DEER 

round the restless cattle; while roping, saddling, and 
mastering the rough horses each morning, with numbed 
and stiffened limbs, though warming to the blood, was 
harrowing to the temper. 

On my return to the ranch I found a strange hunter 
staying there — a clean, square-built, honest-looking lit- 
tle fellow, but evidently not a native American. As a 
rule nobody displays much curiosity about any one else's 
antecedents in the far West; but I happened to ask my 
foreman who the newcomer was — chiefly because the 
said newcomer, evidently appreciating the warmth and 
comfort of the clean, roomy ranch-house, with its roar- 
ing fires, books, and good fare, seemed inclined to make 
a permanent stay, according to the custom of the coun- 
try. My foreman, who had a large way of looking at 
questions of foreign ethnology and geography, responded 
with indifference: "Oh, he's a kind of a Dutchman; 
but he hates the other Dutch, mortal. He's from an 
island Germany took from France in the last war ! " 
This seemed puzzling; but it turned out that the 
"island" in question was Alsace. Native Americans 
predominate among the dwellers in and on the borders 
of the wilderness and in the wild country over which 
the great herds of the cattlemen roam; and they take 
the lead in every way. The sons of the Germans, Irish, 
and other European newcomers are usually quick to 
claim to be "straight United States," and to disavow 
all kinship with the fellow countrymen of their fathers. 
Once while with a hunter bearing a German name we 
came by chance on a German hunting-party from one 
of the Eastern cities. One of them remarked to my 
companion that he must be part German himself, to 
which he cheerfully answered: "Well, my father was a 
Dutchman, but my mother was a white woman ! I'm 

41 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

pretty white myself !" Whereat the Germans glowered 
at him gloomily. 

As we were out of meat the Alsatian and one of the 

cowboys and I started down the river with a wagon. 

The first day in camp it rained hard, so that we could 

not hunt. Toward evening we grew tired of doing 

nothing, and as the rain had become a mere fine drizzle, 

we sallied out to drive one of the bottoms for whitetail. 

The cowboy and our one trackhound plunged into the 

young Cottonwood which grew thickly over the sandy 

bottom; while the little hunter and I took our stands 

on a cut bank, twenty feet high and half a mile long, 

which hedged in the trees from behind. Three or four 

game trails led up through steep, narrow clefts in this 

bank; and we tried to watch these. Soon I saw a deer 

in an opening below, headed toward one end of the bank, 

round which another game trail led; and I ran hard 

toward this end, where it turned into a knife-like ridge 

of clay. About fifty yards from the point there must 

have been some slight irregularities in the face of the 

bank, enough to give the deer a foothold; for as I ran 

along the animal suddenly bounced over the crest, so 

close that I could have hit it with my right hand. As 

I tried to pull up short and swing round, my feet slipped 

from under me in the wet clay, and down I went; while 

the deer literally turned a terrified somersault backward. 

I flung myself to the edge and missed a hurried shot as 

it raced back on its tracks. Then, wheeling, I saw the 

little hunter running toward me along the top of the 

cut bank, his face on a broad grin. He leaped over one 

of the narrow clefts, up which a game trail led; and 

hardly was he across before the frightened deer bolted 

up it, not three yards from his back. He did not turn, 

in spite of my shouting and handwaving, and the fright- 

42 



THE WHITETAIL DEER 

ened deer, in the last stage of panic at finding itself 
again almost touching one of its foes, sped off across 
the grassy slopes like a quarter-horse. When at last 
the hunter did turn, it was too late; and our long-range 
fusillade proved harmless. During the next two days 
I redeemed myself, killing four deer. 

Coming back our wagon broke down, no unusual 
incident in ranch land, where there is often no road, 
while the strain is great in hauling through quick- 
sands, and up or across steep broken hills; it rarely 
makes much difference beyond the temporary delay, 
for plains-men and mountain-men are very handy and 
self-helpful. Besides, a mere breakdown sinks into 
nothing compared to having the team play out; which 
is, of course, most apt to happen at the times when it 
insures hardship and suffering, as in the middle of a 
snow-storm, or when crossing a region with no water. 
However, the reinsmen of the plains must needs face 
many such accidents, not to speak of runaways, or hav- 
ing the wagon pitch-pole over on to the team in drop- 
ping down too steep a hillside. Once after a three days' 
rain-storm some of us tried to get the ranch-wagon 
along a trail which led over the ridge of a gumbo, or 
clay butte. The sticky stuff clogged our shoes, the 
horses' hoofs, and the wheels; and it was even more 
slippery than it was sticky. Finally we struck a slop- 
ing shoulder; with great struggling, pulling, pushing, 
and shouting, we reached the middle of it, and then, as 
one of my men remarked, "the whole darned outfit slid 
into the coulee." 

These hunting trips after deer or antelope with the 
wagon usually take four or five days. I always ride 
some tried hunting horse; and the wagon itself when 
on such a hunt is apt to lead a checkered career, as half 

43 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the time there is not the vestige of a trail to follow. 
Moreover we often make a hunt when the good horses 
are on the round-up, or otherwise employed, and we 
have to get together a scrub team of cripples or else 
of outlaws — vicious devils, only used from dire need. 
The best teamster for such a hunt that we ever had 
on the ranch was a weather-beaten old fellow known 
as "Old Man Tompkins." In the course of a long 
career as lumberman, plains teamster, buffalo-hunter, 
and Indian fighter, he had passed several years as a 
Rocky Mountain stage-driver; and a stage-driver of 
the Rockies is of necessity a man of such skill and nerve 
that he fears no team and no country. No matter how 
wild the unbroken horses, old Tompkins never asked 
help; and he hated to drive less than a four-in-hand. 
\Mien he once had a grip on the reins, he let no one 
hold the horses' heads. All he wished was an open 
plain for the rush at the beginning. The first plunge 
might take the wheelers' forefeet over the cross-bars of 
the leaders, but he never stopped for that; on went the 
team, running, bounding, rearing, tumbling, while the 
wagon leaped behind, until gradually things straightened 
out of their own accord. I soon found, however, that 
I could not allow him to carry a rifle; for he was an 
inveterate game-butcher. In the presence of game the 
old fellow became fairly wild with excitement, and for- 
got the years and rheumatism which had crippled him. 
Once, after a long and tiresome day's hunt, we were 
walking home together; he was carrying his boots in 
his hands, bemoaning the fact that his feet hurt him. 
Suddenly a whitetail jumped up; down dropped old 
Tompkins's boots, and away he went like a college 
sprinter, entirely heedless of stones and cactus. By 
some indiscriminate firing at long range we dropped 

44 



THE WHITETAIL DEER 

the deer; and as old Tompkins cooled down he realized 
that his bare feet had paid full penalty for his dash. 

One of these wagon trips I remember because I 
missed a fair running shot which I much desired to hit; 
and afterward hit a very much more difficult shot about 
which I cared very little. Ferguson and I, with Sylvane 
and one or two others, had gone a day's journey down 
the river for a hunt. We went along the bottoms, 
crossing the stream every mile or so, with an occasional 
struggle through mud or quicksand, or up the steep, 
rotten banks. An old buffalo-hunter drove the wagon, 
with a couple of shaggy, bandy-legged ponies; the rest 
of us jogged along in front on horseback, picking out 
a trail through the bottoms and choosing the best 
crossing-places. Some of the bottoms were grassy 
pastures; on others great, gnarled cottonwoods with 
shivered branches stood in clumps; yet others were 
choked with a true forest growth. Late in the after- 
noon we went into camp, choosing a spot where the 
cottonwoods were young; their glossy leaves trembled 
and rustled unceasingly. We speedily picketed the 
horses — changing them about as they ate off the grass, 
— drew water, and hauled great logs in front of where 
we had pitched the tent, while the wagon stood near by. 
Each man laid out his bed; the food and kitchen kit 
were taken from the wagon; supper was cooked and 
eaten; and we then lay round the camp-fire, gazing 
into it, or up at the brilliant stars, and listening to the 
wild, mournful wailing of the coyotes. They were very 
plentiful round this camp; before sunrise and after 
sundown they called unceasingly. 

Next day I took a long tramp and climb after 
mountain-sheep and missed a running shot at a fine 
ram, about a hundred yards off; or, rather, I hit him 

45 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

and followed his bloody trail a couple of miles, but 
failed to find him; whereat I returned to camp much 
cast down. 

Early the following morning Sylvane and I started 
for another hunt, this time on horseback. The air 
was crisp and pleasant; the beams of the just-risen sun 
struck sharply on the umber-colored hills and white 
cliff walls guarding the river, bringing into high relief 
their strangely carved and channelled fronts. Below 
camp the river was little but a succession of shallow 
pools strung along the broad sandy bed, which in spring- 
time was filled from bank to bank with foaming muddy 
water. Two mallards sat in one of these pools; and 
I hit one with the rifle, so nearly missing that the ball 
scarcely ruffled a feather; yet in some way the shock 
told, for the bird, after flying thirty yards, dropped on 
the sand. 

Then we left the river and our active ponies scrambled 
up a small canyon-like break in the bluffs. All day we 
rode among the hills; sometimes across rounded slopes, 
matted with short buffalo-grass; sometimes over barren 
buttes of red or white clay, where only sage-brush and 
cactus grew; or beside deep ravines, black with stunted 
cedar; or along beautiful winding coulees, where the 
grass grew rankly, and the thickets of ash and wild 
plum made brilliant splashes of red and yellow and 
tender green. Yet we saw nothing. 

As evening grew on we rode riverward ; we slid down 
the steep bluff walls, and loped across a great bottom 
of sage-brush and tall grass, our horses now and then 
leaping like cats over the trunks of dead cottonwoods. 
As we came to the brink of the cut bank which forms the 
hither boundary of the river in freshet time, we sud- 
denly saw two deer, a doe and a well-grown fawn — of 

46 



THE WHITETAIL DEER 

course long out of the spotted coat. They were walking 
with heads down along the edge of a sand-bar, near a 
pool, on the farther side of the stream bed, over two 
hundred yards distant. They saw us at once, and turn- 
ing, galloped away, with flags aloft, the pictures of 
springing, vigorous beauty. I jumped off my horse in 
an instant, knelt, and covered the fawn. It was going 
straight away from me, running very evenly, and I 
drew a coarse sight at the tip of the white flag. As I 
pulled trigger down went the deer, the ball having gone 
into the back of its head. The distance was a good 
three hundred yards; and while of course there was 
much more chance than skill in the shot I felt well 
pleased with it — though I could not help a regret that, 
while making such a diflBcult shot at a mere whitetail, 
I should have missed a much easier shot at a noble 
bighorn. Not only I, but all the camp, had a practical 
interest in my success; for we had no fresh meat, and 
a fat whitetail fawn, killed in October, yields the best 
of venison. So after dressing the deer I slung the car- 
cass behind my saddle, and we rode swiftly back to 
camp through the dark; and that evening we feasted 
on the juicy roasted ribs. 

The degree of tameness and unsuspiciousness shown 
by whitetail deer depends, of course, upon the amount 
of molestation to which they are exposed. Their times 
for sleeping, feeding, and coming to water vary from 
the same cause. Where they are little persecuted they 
feed long after sunrise and before sunset, and drink 
when the sun is high in the heavens, sometimes even 
at midday; they then show but little fear of man, and 
speedily become indifferent to the presence of deserted 
dwellings. 

In the cattle country the ranch-houses are often shut 

47 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

during the months of warm weather, when the round- 
ups succeed one another without intermission, as the 
calves must be branded, the beeves gathered and 
shipped, long trips made to collect strayed animals, and 
the trail stock driven from the breeding to the fatten- 
ing grounds. At that time all the men-folk may have 
to be away in the white-topped wagons working among 
the horned herds, whether plodding along the trail or 
wandering to and fro on the range. Late one summer 
when my own house had been thus closed for many 
months, I rode thither with a friend to pass a week. 
The place already wore the look of having slipped away 
from the domain of man. The wild forces, barely thrust 
back beyond the threshold of our habitation, were 
prompt to spring across it to renewed possession the 
moment we withdrew. The rank grass grew tall in the 
yard and on the sodded roofs of the stable and sheds; 
the weather-beaten log walls of the house itself were 
one in tint with the trunks of the gnarled cottonwoods 
by which it was shaded. Evidently the woodland 
creatures had come to regard the silent, deserted build- 
ings as mere outgrowths of the wilderness, no more 
to be feared than the trees around them or the gray, 
strangely shaped buttes behind. 

Lines of delicate, heart-shaped footprints in the 
muddy reaches of the half-dry river-bed showed where 
the deer came to water; and in the dusty cattle-trails 
among the ravines many round tracks betrayed the 
passing and repassing of timber-wolves — once or twice 
in the late evening we listened to their savage and mel- 
ancholy howling. Cottontail rabbits burrowed under 
the veranda. Within doors the bushy -tailed pack- 
rats had possession, and at night they held a perfect 
witches' sabbath in the garret and kitchen; while a 

48 



THE WHITETAIL DEER 

little white-footed mouse, having dragged half the 
stuffing out of a mattress, had made thereof a big, 
fluffy nest entirely filling the oven. 

Yet, in spite of the abundant sign of game, we at 
first suffered under one of those spells of ill luck which 
at times befall all hunters, and for several days we 
could kill nothing, though we tried hard, being in need 
of fresh meat. The moon was full — each evening, sitting 
on the ranch veranda, or walking homeward, we watched 
it rise over the line of bluffs beyond the river — and the 
deer were feeding at night; moreover, in such hot 
weather they lie very close, move as little as possible, 
and are most difficult to find. Twice we lay out from 
dusk until dawn in spite of the mosquitoes, but saw 
nothing; and the chances we did get we failed to profit 

by. 

One morning, instead of trudging out to hunt, I 
stayed at home, and sat in a rocking-chair on the ve- 
randa reading, rocking, or just sitting still listening to 
the low rustling of the cottonwood branches overhead 
and gazing across the river. Through the still, clear, hot 
air, the faces of the bluffs shone dazzling white; no 
shadow fell from the cloudless sky on the grassy slopes 
or on the groves of timber; only the far-away cooing 
of a mourning-dove broke the silence. Suddenly my 
attention was arrested by a slight splashing in the 
water; glancing up from my book I saw three deer, 
which had come out of the thick fringe of bushes and 
young trees across the river, and were strolling along 
the sand-bars directly opposite me. Slipping stealthily 
into the house I picked up my rifle and slipped back 
again. One of the deer was standing motionless, broad- 
side to me; it was a long shot, two hundred and fifty 
yards, but I had a rest against a pillar of the veranda. 

49 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

I held true, and as the smoke cleared away the deer lay 
struggling on the sands. 

As the whitetail is the most common and widely 
distributed of American game, so the Columbian black- 
tail has the most sharply limited geographical range; 
for it is confined to the northwest coast, where it is by 
far the most abundant deer. In antlers it is indis- 
tinguishable from the common blacktail of the Rockies 
and the great plains, and it has the regular blacktail 
gait, a succession of stiff-legged bounds on all four feet 
at once; but its tail is more like a white tail's in shape, 
though black above. As regards methods of hunting, 
and the amount of sport yielded, it stands midway 
between its two brethren. It lives in a land of magnifi- 
cent timber, where the trees tower far into the sky, the 
giants of their kind; and there are few more attractive 
sports than still-hunting on the mountains among these 
forests of marvellous beauty and grandeur. There are 
many lakes among the mountains where it dwells, and 
as it cares more for water than the ordinary blacktail, 
it is comparatively easy for hounds to drive it into 
some pond where it can be killed at leisure. It is thus 
often killed by hounding. 

The only one I ever killed was a fine young buck. 
We had camped near a little pond, and as evening fell 
I strolled off toward it and sat down. Just after sunset 
the buck came out of the woods. For some moments 
he hesitated and then walked forward and stood by 
the edge of the water, about sixty yards from me. We 
were out of meat, so I held right behind his shoulder, 
and though he went off, his bounds were short and weak 
and he fell before he reached the wood. 



50 



IV 

ON THE CATTLE RANGES; THE PRONGHORN 

ANTELOPE 

Early one June just after the close of the regular 
spring round-up, a couple of wagons with a score of 
riders between them were sent to work some hitherto 
untouched country between the Little Missouri and the 
Yellowstone. I was to go as the representative of our 
own and of one or two neighboring brands; but as the 
round-up had halted near my ranch I determined to 
spend a day there and then to join the wagons — the 
appointed meeting-place being a cluster of red scoria 
buttes, some forty miles distant, where there was a 
spring of good water. 

Most of my day at the ranch was spent in slumber; 
for I had been several weeks on the round-up, where 
nobody ever gets quite enough sleep. This is the only 
drawback to the work; otherwise it is pleasant and 
exciting, with just that slight touch of danger necessary 
to give it zest, and without the wearing fatigue of such 
labor as lumbering or mining. But there is never 
enough sleep, at least on the spring and midsummer 
round-ups. The men are in the saddle from dawn until 
dusk, at the time when the days are longest on these 
great northern plains; and in addition there is the 
regular night guarding and now and then a furious 
storm or a stampede, when for twenty hours at a 
stretch the riders only dismount to change horses or 
snatch a mouthful of food. 

I started in the bright sunrise, riding one horse and 
driving loose before me eight others, one carrying my 

51 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

bedding. They travelled strung out in single file. I 
kept them trotting and loping, for loose horses are 
easiest to handle when driven at some speed, and 
moreover the way was long. My rifle was slung under 
my thigh; the lariat was looped on the saddle-horn. 

At first our trail led through winding coulees and 
sharp grassy defiles; the air was wonderfully clear, 
the flowers were in bloom, the breath of the wind in 
my face was odorous and sweet. The patter and beat 
of the unshod hoofs rising in half-rhythmic measure 
frightened the scudding deer; but the yellow-breasted 
meadow-larks, perched on the budding tops of the 
bushes, sang their rich, full songs without heeding us 
as we went by. 

When the sun was well on high and the heat of the 
day had begun we came to a dreary and barren plain, 
broken by rows of low clay buttes. The ground in 
places was whitened by alkali; elsewhere it was dull 
gray. Here there grew nothing save sparse tufts of 
coarse grass, and cactus, and sprawling sage-brush. 
In the hot air all things seen afar danced and wavered. 
As I rode and gazed at the shimmering haze the vast 
desolation of the landscape bore on me; it seemed as 
if the unseen and unknown powers of the wastes were 
moving by and marshalling their silent forces. No man 
save the wilderness-dweller knows the strong melan- 
choly fascination of these long rides through lonely 
lands. 

At noon, that the horses might graze and drink, I 
halted where some box-alders grew by a pool in the bed 
of a half-dry creek; and shifted my saddle to a fresh 
beast. When we started again we came out on the 
rolling prairie, where the green sea of wind-rippled grass 
stretched limitless as far as the eye could reach. Little 

52 



ON THE CATTLE-RANGES 

striped gophers scuttled away, or stood perfectly 
straight at the mouths of their burrows, looking like 
picket-pins. Curlews clamored mournfully as they 
circled overhead. Prairie-fowl swept off clucking and 
calling, or strutted about with their sharp tails erect. 
Antelope were very plentiful, running like race-horses 
across the level, or uttering their queer, barking grunt 
as they stood at gaze, the white hairs on their rumps all 
on end, their neck-bands of broken brown and white 
vivid in the sunlight. They were found singly or in 
small straggling parties; the master-bucks had not yet 
begun to drive out the younger and weaker ones, as 
later in the season, when each would gather into a herd 
as many does as his jealous strength could guard from 
rivals. The nursing does whose kids had come early 
were often found with the bands; the others kept apart. 
The kids were very conspicuous figures on the prairies, 
across which they scudded like jack-rabbits, showing 
nearly as much speed and alertness as their parents; 
only the very young sought safety by lying flat to 
escape notice. 

The horses cantered and trotted steadily over the 
mat of buffalo-grass, steering for the group of low 
scoria mounds which was my goal. In mid-afternoon I 
reached it. The two wagons were drawn up near the 
spring; under them lay the night wranglers, asleep; 
near by the teamster cooks were busy about the evening 
meal. A little way off the two day wranglers were 
watching the horse-herd; into which I speedily turned 
my own animals. The riders had already driven in 
the bunches of cattle, and were engaged in branding 
the calves and turning loose the animals that were not 
needed, while the remainder were kept, forming the 
nucleus of the herd which was to accompany the wagon. 

53 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

As soon as the work was over the men rode to the 
wagons; sinewy fellows with tattered broad-brimmed 
hats and clanking spurs, some wearing leather chaps or 
leggings, others having their trousers tucked into their 
high-heeled top-boots, all with their flannel shirts and 
loose neckerchiefs dusty and sweaty. A few were in- 
dulging in rough, good-natured horse-play, to an accom- 
paniment of yelling mirth; most were grave and taci- 
turn, greeting me with a silent nod or a "How ! friend." 
A very talkative man, unless the acknowledged wit of 
the party, according to the somewhat florid frontier 
notion of wit, is always looked on with disfavor in a 
cow camp. After supper, eaten in silent haste, we 
gathered round the embers of the small fires, and the 
conversation glanced fitfully over the threadbare sub- 
jects common to all such camps; the antics of some 
particularly vicious bucking bronco, how the different 
brands of cattle were showing up, the smallness of the 
calf drop, the respective merits of rawhide lariats and 
grass ropes, and bits of rather startling and violent news 
concerning the fates of certain neighbors. Then one 
by one we began to turn in under our blankets. 

Our wagon was to furnish the night guards for the 
cattle; and each of us had his gentlest horse tied ready 
to hand. The night guards went on duty two at a time 
for two-hour watches. By good luck my watch came 
last. My comrade was a happy-go-lucky young Texan 
who for some inscrutable reason was known as "Latigo 
Strap"; he had just come from the South with a big 
drove of trail cattle. 

A few minutes before two, one of the guards who had 
gone on duty at midnight rode into camp and wakened 
us up by shaking our shoulders. Fumbling in the dark, 
I speedily saddled my horse; Latigo had left his saddled 

54 



ON THE CATTLE RANGES 

and he started ahead of me. One of the annoyances of 
night guarding, at least in thick weather, is the oc- 
casional difficulty of finding the herd after leaving camp, 
or in returning to camp after the watch is over; there 
are few things more exasperating than to be helplessly 
wandering about in the dark under such circumstances. 
However, on this occasion there was no such trouble; 
for it was a brilliant starlight night and the herd had 
been bedded down by a sugar-loaf butte which made 
a good landmark. As we reached the spot we could 
make out the loom of the cattle lying close together on 
the level plain; and then the dim figure of a horseman 
rose vaguely from the darkness and moved by in silence; 
it was the other of the two midnight guards, on his way 
back to his broken slumber. 

At once we began to ride slowly round the cattle in op- 
posite directions. We were silent, for the night was clear 
and the herd quiet; in wild weather, when the cattle are 
restless, the cowboys never cease calling and singing as 
they circle them, for the sounds seem to quiet the beasts. 

For over an hour we steadily paced the endless round, 
saying nothing, with our greatcoats buttoned, for the 
air was chill toward morning on the northern plains, 
even in summer. Then faint streaks of gray appeared 
in the east. Latigo Strap began to call merrily to the 
cattle. A coyote came sneaking over the butte near by 
and halted to yell and wail; afterward he crossed the 
coulee and from the hillside opposite again shrieked in 
dismal crescendo. The dawn brightened rapidly; the 
little skylarks of the plains began to sing, soaring far 
overhead, while it was still much too dark to see them. 
Their song is not powerful, but it is so clear and fresh 
and long-continued that it always appeals to one very 
strongly; especially because it is most often heard in 

55 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the rose-tinted air of the glorious mornings, while the 
listener sits in the saddle, looking across the endless 
sweep of the prairies. 

As it grew lighter the cattle became restless, rising 
and stretching themselves while we continued to ride 
round them. 

"Then the bronc' began to pitch 
And I began to ride; 
He bucked me off a cut bank, 
Hell ! I nearly died !" 

sang Latigo from the other side of the herd. A yell 
from the wagons told that the cook was summoning 
the sleeping cow-punchers to breakfast; we were soon 
able to distinguish their figures as they rolled out of 
their bedding, wrapped and corded it into bundles, and 
huddled sullenly round the little fires. The horse- 
wranglers were driving in the saddle bands. All the 
cattle got on their feet and started feeding. In a few 
minutes the hasty breakfast at the wagons had evi- 
dently been despatched, for we could see the men form- 
ing rope corrals into which the ponies were driven; 
then each man saddled, bridled, and mounted his horse, 
two or three of the half-broken beasts bucking, rearing, 
and plunging frantically in the vain effort to unseat 
their riders. 

The two men who were first in the saddle relieved 
Latigo and myself, and we immediately galloped to 
camp, shifted our saddles to fresh animals, gulped down 
a cup or two of hot coffee, and some pork, beans, and 
bread, and rode to the spot where the others were 
gathered, lolling loosely in their saddles and waiting 
for the round-up boss to assign them their tasks. We 
were the last and as soon as we arrived the boss divided 

56 



ON THE CATTLE-RANGES 

all into two parties for the morning work, or "circle 
riding," whereby the cattle were to be gathered for the 
round-up proper. Then, as the others started, he 
turned to me and remarked: "We've got enough hands 
to drive this open country without you; but we're out 
of meat, and I don't want to kill a beef for such a small 
outfit; can't you shoot some antelope this morning? 
We'll pitch camp by the big blasted cottonwood at the 
foot of the ash coulees, over yonder, below the breaks 
of Dry Creek." 

Of course I gladly assented, and was speedily riding 
alone across the grassy slopes. There was no lack of 
the game I was after, for from every rise of ground I 
could see antelope scattered across the prairie, singly, 
in couples, or in bands. But their very numbers, joined 
to the lack of cover on such an open, flattish country, 
proved a bar to success; while I was stalking one band 
another was sure to see me and begin running, whereat 
the first would likewise start; I missed one or two very 
long shots, and noon found me still without game. 

However, I was then lucky enough to see a band of 
a dozen feeding to windward of a small butte, and by 
galloping in a long circle I got within a quarter of a 
mile of them before having to dismount. The stalk 
itself was almost too easy; for I simply walked to the 
butte, climbed carefully up a slope where the soil was 
firm and peered over the top to see the herd, a little 
one, a hundred yards off. They saw me at once and 
ran, but I held well ahead of a fine young prongbuck, 
and rolled him over like a rabbit, with both shoulders 
broken. In a few minutes I was riding onward once 
more, with the buck lashed behind my saddle. 

The next one I got, a couple of hours later, offered a 
much more puzzling stalk. He was a big fellow in 

57 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

company with four does or small bucks. All five were 
lying in the middle of a slight basin, at the head of a 
gentle valley. At first sight it seemed impossible to 
get near them, for there was not so much cover as a 
sage-brush, and the smooth, shallow basin in which they 
lay was over a thousand yards across, while they were 
looking directly down the valley. However, it is cu- 
rious how hard it is to tell, even from near by, whether 
a stalk can or cannot be made; the difiiculty being 
to estimate the exact amount of shelter yielded by 
little inequalities of ground. In this instance a small, 
shallow watercourse, entirely dry, ran along the valley, 
and after much study I decided to try to crawl up it, 
although the big bulging telescopic eyes of the prong- 
buck — which have much keener sight than deer or any 
other game — would in such case be pointed directly 
my way. 

Having made up my mind I backed cautiously down 
from the coign of vantage whence I had first seen the 
game, and ran about a mile to the mouth of a washout 
which formed the continuation of the watercourse in 
question. Protected by the high clay banks of this 
washout I was able to walk upright until within half a 
mile of the prongbucks; then my progress became very 
tedious and toilsome, as I had to work my way up the 
watercourse flat on my stomach, dragging the rifle be- 
side me. At last I reached a spot beyond which not 
even a snake could crawl unnoticed. In front was a 
low bank a couple of feet high, crested with tufts of 
coarse grass. Raising my head very cautiously I peered 
through these and saw the pronghorn about a hundred 
and fifty yards distant. At the same time I found that 
I had crawled to the edge of a village of prairie-dogs, 
which had already made me aware of their presence 

58 



ON THE CATTLE RANGES 

by their shrill yelping. They saw me at once: and all 
those away from their homes scuttled toward them, and 
dived down the burrows, or sat on the mounds at the 
entrances, scolding convulsively and jerking their fat 
little bodies and short tails. This commotion at once 
attracted the attention of the antelope. They rose 
forthwith, and immediately caught a glimpse of the 
black muzzle of the rifle, which I was gently pushing 
through the grass tufts. The fatal curiosity which so 
often in this species offsets wariness and sharp sight 
proved my friend; evidently the antelope could not 
quite make me out and wished to know what I was. 
They moved nervously to and fro, striking the earth 
with their fore hoofs, and now and then uttering a 
sudden bleat. At last the big buck stood still broadside 
to me and I fired. He went off with the others, but 
lagged behind as they passed over the hill crest, and 
when I reached it I saw him standing, not very far off, 
with his head down. Then he walked backward a few 
steps, fell over on his side, and died. 

As he was a big buck I slung him across the saddle, 
and started for camp afoot, leading the horse. How- 
ever, my hunt was not over, for while still a mile from 
the wagons, going down a coulee of Dry Creek, a year- 
ling prongbuck walked over the divide to my right and 
stood still until I sent a bullet into its chest; so that 
I made my appearance in camp with three antelope. 

I spoke above of the sweet singing of the Western 
meadow-lark and plains skylark; neither of them kin 
to the true skylark, by the way, one being a cousin of 
the grackles and hangbirds, and the other a kind of 
pipit. To me both of these birds are among the most 
attractive singers to which I have ever listened; but 
with all bird music much must be allowed for the sur- 

59 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

roundings and much for the mood and the keenness of 
sense of the hstener. The lilt of the little plains skylark 
is neither very powerful nor very melodious; but it is 
sweet, pure, long-sustained, with a ring of courage be- 
fitting a song uttered in highest air. 

The meadow-lark is a singer of a higher order, deserv- 
ing to rank with the best. Its song has length, variety, 
power, and rich melody; and there is in it sometimes 
a cadence of wild sadness, inexpressibly touching. Yet 
I cannot say that either song would appeal to others 
as it appeals to me; for to me it comes forever laden 
with a hundred memories and associations; with the 
sight of dim hills reddening in the dawn, with the 
breath of cool morning winds blowing across lonely 
plains, with the scent of flowers on the sunlit prairie, 
with the motion of fiery horses, with all the strong thrill 
of eager and buoyant life. I doubt if any man can judge 
dispassionately the bird songs of his own country; he 
cannot disassociate them from the sights and sounds 
of the land that is so dear to him. 

This is not a feeling to regret, but it must be taken 
into account in accepting any estimate of bird music — 
even in considering the reputation of the European 
skylark and nightingale. To both of these birds I have 
often listened in their own homes ; always with pleasure 
and admiration, but always with a growing belief that 
relatively to some other birds they were ranked too 
high. They are pre-eminently birds with literary as- 
sociations; most people take their opinions of them at 
second hand, from the poets. 

No one can help liking the lark; it is such a brave, 
honest, cheery bird, and, moreover, its song is uttered 
in the air, and is very long-sustained. But it is by no 
means a musician of the first rank. The nightingale is 

60 



ON THE CATTLE-RANGES 

a performer of a very different and far higher order; 
yet, though it is indeed a notable and admirable singer, 
it is an exaggeration to call it unequalled. In melody, 
and above all in that finer, higher melody where the 
chords vibrate with the touch of eternal sorrow, it can- 
not rank with such singers as the wood-thrush and 
hermit-thrush. The serene, ethereal beauty of the 
hermit's song, rising and falling through the still evening 
under the archways of hoary mountain forests that have 
endured from time everlasting; the golden, leisurely 
chiming of the wood-thrush, sounding on June after- 
noons, stanza by stanza, through sun-flecked groves of 
tall hickories, oaks, and chestnuts — with these there is 
nothing in the nightingale's song to compare. But in 
volume and continuity; in tuneful, voluble, rapid out- 
pouring and ardor; above all, in skilful and intricate 
variation of theme, its song far surpasses that of either 
of the thrushes. In all these respects it is more just 
to compare it with the mocking-bird's, which, as a rule, 
likewise falls short precisely on those points where the 
songs of the two thrushes excel. 

The mocking-bird is a singer that has suffered much 
in reputation from its powers of mimicry. On ordinary 
occasions, and especially in the daytime, it insists on 
playing the harlequin. But when free in its own favorite 
haunts at night in the love season it has a song, or 
rather songs, which are not only purely original but are 
also more beautiful than any other bird music what- 
soever. Once I listened to a mocking-bird singing the 
livelong spring night, under the full moon, in a mag- 
nolia tree; and I do not think I shall ever forget its song. 

It was on the plantation of Major Campbell Brown, 
near Nashville, in the beautiful, fertile mid-Tennessee 
country. The mocking-birds were prime favorites on 

61 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the place; and were given full scope for the develop- 
ment not only of their bold friendliness toward man- 
kind but also of that marked individuality and origi- 
nality of character in which they so far surpass every 
other bird as to become the most interesting of all 
feathered folk. One of the mockers, which lived in the 
hedge bordering the garden, was constantly engaged 
in an amusing feud with an honest old setter dog, the 
point of attack being the tip of the dog's tail. For some 
reason the bird seemed to regard any hoisting of the 
setter's tail as a challenge and insult. It would flutter 
near the dog as he walked; the old setter would become 
interested in something and raise his tail. The bird 
would promptly fly at it and peck the tip; whereupon 
down went the tail until in a couple of minutes the old 
fellow would forget himself, and the scene would be 
repeated. The dog usually bore the assaults with comic 
resignation; and the mocker easily avoided any mo- 
mentary outburst of clumsy resentment. 

On the evening in question the moon was full. My 
host kindly assigned me a room of which the windows 
opened on a great magnolia-tree, where, I was told, a 
mocking-bird sang every night and all night long. I 
went to my room about ten. The moonlight was 
shining in through the open window, and the mock- 
ing-bird was already in the magnolia. The great tree 
was bathed in a flood of shining silver; I could see each 
twig, and mark every action of the singer, who was 
pouring forth such a rapture of ringing melody as I 
have never listened to before or since. Sometimes he 
would perch motionless for many minutes, his body 
quivering and thrilling with the outpour of music. 
Then he would drop softly from twig to twig, until 
the lowest limb was reached, when he would rise, flut- 

62 



ON THE CATTLE RANGES 

tering and leaping through the branches, his song never 
ceasing for an instant, until he reached the summit of 
the tree and launched into the warm, scent-laden air, 
floating in spirals, with outspread wings, until, as if 
spent, he sank gently back into the tree and down 
through the branches, while his song rose into an 
ecstasy of ardor and passion. His voice rang like a 
clarionet, in rich, full tones, and his execution covered 
the widest possible compass; theme followed theme, a 
torrent of music, a swelling tide of harmony, in which 
scarcely any two bars were alike. I stayed till midnight 
listening to him; he was singing when I went to sleep; 
he was still singing when I woke a couple of hours 
later; he sang through the livelong night. 

There are many singers beside the meadow-lark and 
little skylark in the plains country; that brown and 
desolate land, once the home of the thronging buffalo, 
still haunted by the bands of the prongbuck, and 
roamed over in ever-increasing numbers by the branded 
herds of the ranchman. In the brush of the river 
bottoms there are the thrasher and song-sparrow; on 
the grassy uplands the lark-finch, vesper-sparrow, and 
lark-bunting; and in the rough canyons the rock- wren, 
with its ringing melody. 

Yet in certain moods a man cares less for even the 
loveliest bird songs than for the wilder, harsher, stronger 
sounds of the wilderness; the guttural booming and 
clucking of the prairie-fowl and the great sage-fowl in 
spring; the honking of gangs of wild geese, as they fly 
in rapid wedges; the bark of an eagle, wheeling in the 
shadow of storm-scarred cliffs; or the far-off clanging 
of many sand-hill cranes, soaring high overhead in 
circles which cross and recross at an incredible altitude. 
Wilder yet, and stranger, are the cries of the great four- 

63 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

footed beasts; the rhythmic pealing of a bull elk's 
challenge; and that most sinister and mournful sound, 
ever fraught with foreboding of murder and rapine, 
the long-drawn baying of the gray wolf. 

Indeed, save to the trained ear, most mere bird 
songs are not very noticeable. The ordinary wilder- 
ness-dweller, whether hunter or cowboy, scarcely heeds 
them; and in fact knows but little of the smaller birds. 
If a bird has some conspicuous peculiarity of look or 
habit he will notice its existence; but not otherwise. 
He knows a good deal about magpies, whiskey-jacks, 
or water-ousels; but nothing whatever concerning the 
thrushes, finches, and warblers. 

It is the same with mammals. The prairie-dogs he 
cannot help noticing. With the big pack-rats also he 
is well acquainted; for they are handsome, with soft 
gray fur, large eyes, and bushy tails; and, moreover, 
no one can avoid remarking their extraordinary habit 
of carrying to their burrows everything bright, useless, 
and portable, from an empty cartridge-case to a skin- 
ning-knife. But he knows nothing of mice, shrews, 
pocket-gophers, or weasels; and but little even of some 
larger mammals with very marked characteristics. 
Thus I have met but one or two plainsmen who knew 
anything of the curious plains ferret, that rather rare 
weasel-like animal which plays the same part on the 
plains that the mink does by the edges of all our streams 
and brooks and the tree-loving sable in the cold north- 
ern forests. The ferret makes its home in burrows, 
and by preference goes abroad at dawn and dusk, but 
sometimes even at midday. It is as bloodthirsty as 
the mink itself, and its life is one long ramble for prey, 
gophers, prairie-dogs, sage-rabbits, jack-rabbits, snakes, 
and every kind of ground-bird furnishing its food. I 

64 



ON THE CATTLE-RANGES 

have known one to fairly depopulate a prairie-dog town, 
it being the arch-foe of these little rodents, because of 
its insatiable blood lust and its capacity to follow them 
into their burrows. Once I found the bloody body 
and broken eggs of a poor prairie-hen which a ferret had 
evidently surprised on her nest. Another time one of 
my men was eye-witness to a more remarkable instance 
of the little animal's bloodthirsty ferocity. He was 
riding the range, and being attracted by a slight com- 
motion in a clump of grass, he turned his horse thither 
to look, and to his astonishment found an antelope 
fawn at the last gasp, but still feebly struggling, in the 
grasp of a ferret, which had throttled it and was suck- 
ing its blood with hideous greediness. He avenged the 
murdered innocent by a dexterous blow with the knotted 
end of his lariat. 

That mighty bird of rapine, the war-eagle, which on 
the great plains and among the Rockies supplants the 
bald-headed eagle of better-watered regions, is another 
dangerous foe of the young antelope. It is even said 
that under exceptional circumstances eagles will assail 
a full-grown pronghorn; and a neighboring ranchman 
informs me that he was once an eye-witness to such an 
attack. It was a bleak day in the late winter, and he 
was riding home across a wide, dreary plateau, when 
he saw two eagles worrying and pouncing on a prong- 
buck — seemingly a yearling. It made a gallant fight. 
The eagles hovered over it with spread wings, now and 
then swooping down, their talons outthrust, to strike 
at the head, or to try to settle on the loins. The ante- 
lope reared and struck with hoofs and horns like a goat; 
but its strength was failing rapidly, and doubtless it 
would have succumbed in the end had not the approach 
of the ranchman driven off the marauders. 

65 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

I have likewise heard stories of eagles attacking badg- 
ers, foxes, bobcats, and coyotes; but I am inclined to 
think all such cases exceptional. I have never myself 
seen an eagle assail anything bigger than a fawn, lamb, 
kid, or jack-rabbit. It also swoops at geese, sage-fowl, 
and prairie-fowl. On one occasion while riding over 
the range I witnessed an attack on a jack-rabbit. The 
eagle was soaring overhead, and espied the jack while 
the latter was crouched motionless. Instantly the great 
bird rushed down through the humming air, with closed 
wings ; checked itself when some forty yards above the 
jack, hovered for a moment, and again fell like a bolt. 
Away went long-ears, running as only a frightened jack 
can ; and after him the eagle, not with the arrowy rush 
of its descent from high air, but with eager, hurried 
flapping. In a short time it had nearly overtaken the 
fugitive when the latter dodged sharply to one side, 
and the eagle overshot it precisely as a greyhound 
would have done, stopping itself by a powerful, setting 
motion of the great pinions. Twice this manoeuvre was 
repeated; then the eagle made a quick rush, caught 
and overthrew the quarry before it could turn, and in 
another moment was sitting triumphant on the quiver- 
ing body, the crooked talons driven deep into the soft, 
furry sides. 

Once while hunting mountain-sheep in the Bad Lands 
I killed an eagle on the wing with the rifle. I was walk- 
ing beneath a cliff of gray clay, when the eagle sailed 
into view over the crest. As soon as he saw me he 
threw his wings aback, and for a moment before wheel- 
ing poised motionless, offering a nearly stationary tar- 
get; so that my bullet grazed his shoulder, and down 
he came through the air, tumbling over and over. As 
he struck the ground he threw himself on his back, and 

Q6 



ON THE CATTLE RANGES 

fought against his death with the undaunted courage 
proper to his brave and cruel nature. 

Indians greatly prize the feathers of this eagle. With 
them they make their striking and beautiful war-bonnets 
and bedeck the manes and tails of their spirited war 
ponies. Every year the Gros ventres and Mandans 
from the Big Missouri come to the neighborhood of my 
ranch to hunt. Though not good marksmen, they kill 
many whitetail deer, driving the bottoms for them in 
bands, on horseback; and they catch many eagles. 
Sometimes they take these alive by exposing a bait 
near which a hole is dug, where one of them lies hidden 
for days, with Indian patience, until an eagle lights on 
the bait and is noosed. 

Even eagles are far less dangerous enemies to ante- 
lope than are wolves and coyotes. These beasts are 
always prowling round the bands to snap up the sick 
or unwary; and in spring they revel in carnage of the 
kids and fawns. They are not swift enough to overtake 
the grown animals by sheer speed ; but they are superior 
in endurance and, especially in winter, often run them 
down in fair chase. A prongbuck is a plucky little beast, 
and when cornered it often makes a gallant, though 
not a very effectual, fight. 



67 



V 



HUNTING THE PRONGBUCK; FROST, FHIE, AND 

THmST 

As with all other American game, man is a worse foe 
to the pronghorns than all their brute enemies com- 
bined. They hold their own much better than the 
bigger game; on the whole even better than the black- 
tail; but their numbers have been wofully thinned, 
and in many places they have been completely exter- 
minated. The most exciting method of chasing them 
is on horseback with greyhounds; but they are usually 
killed with the rifle. Owing to the open nature of 
the ground they frequent, the shots must generally be 
taken at long range; hence this kind of hunting is pre- 
eminently that needing judgment of distance and skill 
in the use of the long-range rifle at stationary objects. 
On the other hand, the antelope are easily seen, making 
no effort to escape observation, as deer do, and are so 
curious that in very wild districts to this day they can 
sometimes be tolled within rifle-shot by the judicious 
waving of a red flag. In consequence, a good many 
very long, but tempting, shots can be obtained. More 
cartridges are used relatively to the amount of game 
killed on antelope than in any other hunting. 

Often I have killed prongbucks while riding between 
the outlying line camps, which are usually stationed a 
dozen miles or so back from the river where the Bad 
Lands melt into the prairie. In continually trying long 
shots, of course one occasionally makes a remarkable 
hit. Once I remember, while riding down a broad, 
shallow coulee with two of my cow-hands — Seawell and 

68 



HUNTING THE PRONGBUCK 

Dow, both keen hunters and among the stanchest 
friends I have ever had— rousing a band of antelope 
which stood irresolute at about a hundred yards until I 
killed one. Then they dashed off, and I missed one shot, 
but with my next, to my own utter astonishment, killed 
the last of the band, a big buck, just as he topped a rise 
four hundred yards away. To offset such shots I have 
occasionally made an unaccountable miss. Once I was 
hunting with the same two men, on a rainy day, when 
we came on a bunch of antelope some seventy yards 
off, lying down on the side of a coulee, to escape the 
storm. They huddled together a moment to gaze, 
and, with stiffened fingers I took a shot, my yellow 
oilskin slicker flapping around me in the wind and rain. 
Down went one buck, and away went the others. One 
of my men walked up to the fallen beast, bent over it, 
and then asked: "Where did you aim .? " Not reassured 
by the question, I answered doubtfully, "Behind the 
shoulder"; whereat he remarked drily: "Well, you hit 
it in the eye !" I never did know whether I killed the 
antelope I aimed at or another. Yet that same day I 
killed three more bucks at decidedly long shots; at the 
time we lacked meat at the ranch, and were out to make 
a good killing. 

Besides their brute and human foes, the pronghorn 
must also fear the elements, and especially the snows of 
winter. On the northern plains the cold weather is of 
polar severity, and turns the green, grassy prairies of 
midsummer into iron-bound wastes. The blizzards 
whirl and sweep across them with a shrieking fury which 
few living things may face. The snow is like fine ice 
dust, and the white waves ghde across the grass with a 
stealthy, crawling motion which has in it something 
sinister and cruel. Accordingly, as the bright fall 

69 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

weather passes, and the dreary winter draws nigh, 
when the days shorten, and the nights seem intermi- 
nable, and gray storms lower above the gray horizon, 
the antelope gather in bands and seek sheltered places, 
where they may abide through the winter-time of 
famine and cold and deep snow. Some of these bands 
travel for many hundred miles, going and returning 
over the same routes, swimming rivers, crossing prairies, 
and threading their way through steep defiles. Such 
bands make their winter home in places like the Black 
Hills, or similar mountainous regions, where the shelter 
and feed are good, and where in consequence antelope 
have wintered in countless thousands for untold gener- 
ations. Other bands do not travel for any very great 
distance, but seek some sheltered grassy table-land in 
the Bad Lands, or some well-shielded valley where 
their instinct and experience teach them that the snow 
does not lie deep in winter. Once having chosen such 
a place they stand much persecution before leaving it. 

One December, an old hunter whom I knew told 
me that such a band was wintering a few miles from a 
camp where two line-riders of the W Bar brand were 
stationed; and I made up my mind to ride thither and 
kill a couple. The line camp was twenty miles from 
my ranch; the shack in which the old hunter lived was 
midway between, and I had to stop there to find out 
the exact lay of the land. 

At dawn, before our early breakfast, I saddled a 
tough, shaggy sorrel horse; hastening indoors as soon 
as the job was over to warm my numbed fingers. 
After breakfast I started, mufSed in my wolfskin coat, 
with beaver-fur cap, gloves, and chaps, and great felt 
overshoes. The windless air was bitter cold, the ther- 
mometer showing well below zero. Snow lay on the 

70 



HUNTING THE PRONGBUCK 

ground, leaving bare patches here and there, but drifted 
deep in the hollows. Under the steel-blue heavens the 
atmosphere had a peculiar glint as if filled with myriads 
of tiny crystals. As I crossed the frozen river, immedi- 
ately in front of the ranch-house, the strangely carved 
tops of the bluffs were reddening palely in the winter 
sunrise. Prairie-fowl were perched in the bare cotton- 
woods along the river brink, showing large in the leaf- 
less branches; they called and clucked to one another. 
Where the ground was level and the snow not too 
deep I loped, and before noon I reached the sheltered 
coulee where, with long poles and bark, the hunter had 
built his teepee — wigwam, as Eastern woodsmen would 
have called it. It stood in a loose grove of elms and 
box-alders; from the branches of the nearest trees hung 
saddles of frozen venison. The smoke rising from the 
funnel-shaped top of the teepee showed that there was 
more fire than usual within; it is easy to keep a good 
teepee warm, though it is so smoky that no one therein 
can stand upright. As I drew rein the skin door was 
pushed aside, and the hard old face and dried, battered 
body of the hunter appeared. He greeted me with a 
surly nod, and a brief request to "light and hev some- 
thin' to eat" — the invariable proffer of hospitality on 
the plains. He wore a greasy buckskin shirt or tunic, 
and an odd cap of badger-skin, from beneath which 
strayed his tangled hair; age, rheumatism, and the 
many accidents and incredible fatigue, hardship, and 
exposure of his past hfe had crippled him, yet he still 
possessed great power of endurance, and in his seamed, 
weather-scarred face his eyes burned fierce and piercing 
as a hawk's. Ever since early manhood he had wandered 
over the plains, hunting and trapping; he had waged 
savage private war against half the Indian tribes of the 

71 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

north; and he had wedded wives in each of the tribes 
of the other half. A few years before this time the 
great buffalo-herds had vanished, and the once swarming 
beaver had shared the same fate; the innumerable 
horses and horned stock of the cattlemen, and the daring 
rough-riders of the ranches, had supplanted alike the 
game and the red and white wanderers who had followed 
it with such fierce rivalry. \Vlien the change took place 
the old fellow, with failing bodily powers, found his 
life-work over. He had little taste for the career of the 
desperado, horse-thief, highwayman, and man-killer, 
which not a few of the old buffalo-hunters adopted when 
their legitimate occupation was gone; he scorned still 
more the life of vicious and idle semicriminality led by 
others of his former companions who were of weaker 
mould. Yet he could not do regular work. His existence 
had been one of excitement, adventure, and restless 
roaming, when it was not passed in lazy ease; his times 
of toil and peril varied by fits of brutal revelry. He had 
no kin, no ties of any kind. He would accept no help, 
for his wants were very few, and he was utterly self- 
reliant. He got meat, clothing, and bedding from the 
antelope and deer he killed; the spare hides and venison 
he bartered for what little else he needed. So he built 
him his teepee in one of the most secluded parts of the 
Bad Lands, where he led the life of a solitary hunter, 
awaiting in grim loneliness the death which he knew 
to be near at hand. 

I unsaddled and picketed my horse, and followed 
the old hunter into his smoky teepee; sat down on the 
pile of worn buffalo-robes which formed his bedding, 
and waited in silence while he fried some deer meat 
and boiled some coffee — he was out of flour. As I ate, 
he gradually unbent and talked quite freely, and before 

72 



HUNTING THE PRONGBUCK 

I left he told me exactly where to find the band, which 
he assured me was located for the winter and would 
not leave unless much harried. 

After a couple of hours' rest I again started, and 
pushed out to the end of the Bad Lands. Here, as there 
had been no wind, I knew I should find in the snow the 
tracks of one of the riders from the line camp, whose 
beat lay along the edge of the prairie for some eight 
miles, until it met the beat of a rider from the line camp 
next above. As nightfall came on it grew even colder; 
long icicles hung from the lips of my horse; and I 
shivered slightly in my fur coat. I had reckoned the 
distance ill, and it was dusk when I struck the trail; but 
my horse at once turned along it of his own accord and 
began to lope. Half an hour later I saw through the 
dark what looked like a spark on the side of a hill. 
Toward this my horse turned; and in another moment 
a whinnying from in front showed I was near the camp. 
The light was shining through a small window, the 
camp itself being a dugout with a log roof and front — 
a kind of frontier building always warm in winter. 
After turning my horse into the rough log stable with 
the horses of the two cowboys, I joined the latter at 
supper inside the dugout; being received of course with 
hearty cordiality. After the intense cold outside the 
warmth within was almost oppressive, for the fire was 
roaring in the big stone fireplace. The bunks were 
broad ; my two friends turned into one, and I was given 
the other, with plenty of bedding; so that my sleep 
was sound. 

We had breakfasted and saddled our horses and were 
off by dawn next morning. My companions, muffled 
in furs, started in opposite directions to ride their lonely 
beats, while I steered for my hunting-ground. It was 

73 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

a lowering and gloomy day; at sunrise pale, lurid sun- 
dogs hung in the glimmering mist; gusts of wind 
moaned through the ravines. 

At last I reached a row of bleak hills, and from a 
ridge looked cautiously down on the chain of plateaus 
where I had been told I should see the antelope. Sure 
enough, there they were, to the number of several 
hundred, scattered over the level snow-streaked surface 
of the nearest and largest plateau, greedily cropping 
the thick, short grass. Leaving my horse tied in a 
hollow I speedily stalked up a coulee to within a hun- 
dred yards of the nearest band and killed a good 
buck. Instantly all the antelope in sight ran together 
into a thick mass and raced away from me, until they 
went over the opposite edge of the plateau; but almost 
as soon as they did so they were stopped by deep drifts 
of powdered snow, and came back to the summit of the 
table-land. They then circled round the edge at a gallop, 
and finally broke madly by me, jostling one another in 
their frantic haste, and crossed by a small ridge into the 
next plateau beyond; as they went by I shot a yearling. 

I now had all the venison I wished, and would shoot 
no more, but I was curious to see how the antelope 
would act, and so walked after them. They ran about 
half a mile, and then the whole herd, of several hundred 
individuals, wheeled into line fronting me, like so many 
cavalry, and stood motionless, the white and brown 
bands on their necks looking like the facings on a uni- 
form. As I walked near they again broke and rushed to 
the end of the valley. Evidently they feared to leave 
the flats for the broken country beyond, where the 
rugged hills were riven by gorges, in some of which 
snow lay deep even thus early in the season. Accord- 
ingly, after galloping a couple of times round the valley, 

74 



HUNTING THE PRONGBUCK 

they once more broke by me, at short range, and tore 
back along the plateaus to that on which I had first 
found them. Their evident and extreme reluctance to 
venture into the broken country round about made me 
readily understand the tales I had heard of game- 
butchers killing over a hundred individuals at a time 
out of a herd so situated. 

I walked back to my game, dressed it, and lashed the 
saddles and hams behind me on my horse ; I had chosen 
old Sorrel Joe for the trip because he was strong, tough, 
and quiet. Then I started for the ranch, keeping to 
the prairie as long as I could, because there the going 
was easier; sometimes I rode, sometimes I ran on foot, 
leading Sorrel Joe. 

Late in the afternoon, as I rode over a roll in the 
prairie I saw ahead of me a sight very unusual at that 
season: a small emigrant train going westward. There 
were three white-topped prairie-schooners, containing 
the household goods, the tow-headed children, and the 
hard-faced, bony women; the tired horses were strain- 
ing wearily in the traces; the bearded, moody men 
walked alongside. They had been belated by sickness, 
and the others of their company had gone ahead to 
take up claims along the Yellowstone; now they them- 
selves were pushing forward in order to reach the 
holdings of their friends before the first deep snows 
stopped all travel. They had no time to halt; for there 
were still two or three miles to go that evening before 
they could find a sheltered resting-place with fuel, grass, 
and water. A little while after passing them I turned 
in the saddle and looked back. The lonely little train 
stood out sharply on the sky-line, the wagons looming 
black against the cold red west as they toiled steadily 
onward across the snowy plains. 

75 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

Night soon fell; but I cared little, for I was on 
ground I knew. The old horse threaded his way at a 
lope along the familiar game trails and cattle-paths; 
in a couple of hours I caught the gleam from the firelit 
windows of the ranch-house. No man who, for his 
good fortune, has at times in his life endured toil and 
hardship, ever fails to appreciate the strong elemental 
pleasures of rest after labor, food after hunger, warmth 
and shelter after bitter cold. 

So much for the winter hunting. But in the fall, 
when the grass is dry as tinder, the antelope-hunter, 
like other plainsmen, must sometimes face fire instead 
of frost. Fire is one of the most dreaded enemies of 
the ranchmen on the cattle-ranges; and fighting a big 
prairie fire is a work of extraordinary labor, and some- 
times of danger. The line of flame, especially when 
seen at night, undulating like a serpent, is very beauti- 
ful; though it lacks the terror and grandeur of the 
great forest fires. 

One October, Ferguson and I, with one of the cow- 
hands, and a friend from the East, took the wagon for 
an antelope-hunt in the broken country between the 
Little Missouri and the Beaver. The cowboy drove 
the wagon to a small spring, near some buttes which 
are well distinguished by a number of fossil tree-stumps; 
while the rest of us, who were mounted on good horses, 
made a circle after antelope. We found none, and rode 
on to camp, reaching it about the middle of the after- 
noon. We had noticed several columns of smoke in the 
southeast, showing that prairie fires were under way; 
but we thought that they were too far off to endanger 
our camp, and accordingly unsaddled our horses and 
sat down to a dinner of bread, beans, and coffee. Be- 
fore we were through, the smoke began to pour over a 

76 



HUNTING THE PRONGBUCK 

ridge a mile distant in such quantities that we ran 
thither with our sKckers, hoping to find some stretch 
of broken ground where the grass was sparse, and 
where we could fight the fire with effect. Our hopes 
were vain. Before we reached the ridge the fire came 
over its crest, and ran down in a long tongue between 
two scoria buttes. Here the grass was quite short and 
thin, and we did our best to beat out the flames; but 
they gradually gained on us, and as they reached the 
thicker grass lower down the slope, they began to roar 
and dart forward in a way that bade us pay heed to 
our own safety. Finally they reached a winding line 
of brushwood in the bottom of the coulee; and as this 
burst into a leaping blaze we saw it was high time to 
look to the safety of our camp, and ran back to it at 
top speed. Ferguson, who had been foremost in fight- 
ing the fire, was already scorched and blackened. 

We were camped on the wagon trail which leads 
along the divide almost due south to Sentinel Butte. 
The line of fire was fanned by a southeasterly breeze, 
and was therefore advancing diagonally to the divide. 
If we could drive the wagon southward on the trail in 
time to get it past the fire before the latter reached the 
divide, we would be to windward of the flames, and 
therefore in safety. Accordingly, while the others were 
hastily harnessing the team, and tossing the bedding 
and provisions into the wagon, I threw the saddle on 
my horse and galloped down the trail to see if there 
was yet time to adopt this expedient. I soon found 
that there was not. Half a mile from camp the trail 
dipped into a deep coulee, where fair-sized trees and 
dense undergrowth made a long winding row of brush 
and timber. The trail led right under the trees at the 
upper end of this coulee. As I galloped by I saw that 

77 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the fire had struck the trees a quarter of a mile below me ; 
in the dried timber it instantly sprang aloft like a giant, 
and roared in a thunderous monotone as it swept up 
the coulee. I galloped to the hill ridge ahead, saw that 
the fire-line had already reached the divide, and turned 
my horse sharp on his haunches. As I again passed 
under the trees, the fire, running like a race-horse in the 
brush, had reached the road; its breath was hot in my 
face; tongues of quivering flame leaped over my head 
and kindled the grass on the hillside fifty yards away. 

When I got back to camp Ferguson had taken 
measures for the safety of the wagon. He had moved 
it across the coulee, which at this point had a wet 
bottom, making a bar to the progress of the flames 
until they had time to work across lower down. Mean- 
while we fought to keep the fire from entering the well- 
grassed space on the hither side of the coulee, between 
it and a row of scoria buttes. Favored by a streak of 
clay ground, where the grass was sparse, we succeeded 
in beating out the flame as it reached this clay streak, 
and again beating it out when it ran round the buttes 
and began to back up toward us against the wind. Then 
we recrossed the coulee with the wagon, before the fire 
swept up the farther side; and so, when the flames 
passed by, they left us camped on a green oasis in the 
midst of a charred, smoking desert. We thus saved 
some good grazing for our horses. 

But our fight with the fire had only begun. No 
stockman will see a fire waste the range and destroy 
the winter feed of the stock without spending every 
ounce of his strength in the effort to put a stop to its 
ravages — even when, as in our case, the force of men 
and horses at hand is so small as to offer only the very 
slenderest hope of success. 

78 



HUNTING THE PRONGBUCK 

We set about the task in the way customary in the 
cattle country. It is impossible for any but a very 
large force to make head against a prairie fire while 
there is any wind; but the wind usually fails after 
nightfall, and accordingly the main fight is generally 
waged during the hours of darkness. 

Before dark we drove to camp and shot a stray steer, 
and then split its carcass in two lengthwise with an 
axe. After sundown the wind lulled; and we started 
toward the line of fire, which was working across a row 
of broken grassy hills, three-quarters of a mile distant. 
Two of us were on horseback, dragging a half-carcass, 
bloody side down, by means of ropes leading from our 
saddle-horns to the fore and hind legs; the other two 
followed on foot with slickers and wet saddle-blankets. 
There was a reddish glow in the night air, and the 
waving, bending lines of flame showed in great bright 
curves against the hillside ahead of us. 

When we reached them, we found the fire burning 
in a long, continuous line. It was not making rapid 
headway, for the air was still, and the flames stood 
upright, two or three feet high. Lengthening the ropes, 
one of us spurred his horse across the fire-line and then, 
wheeling, we dragged the carcass along it; one horse- 
man being on the burnt ground, and one on the unburnt 
grass, while the body of the steer lay lengthwise across 
the line. The weight and the blood smothered the fire 
as we twitched the carcass over the burning grass; 
and the two men following behind with their blankets 
and slickers readily beat out any isolated tufts of flame. 
The fire made the horses wild, and it was not always 
easy to manage both them and the ropes so as to keep 
the carcass true on the line. Sometimes there would 
be a slight puff of wind, and then the man on the grass 

79 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

side of the line ran the risk of a scorching. We were 
blackened with smoke, and the taut ropes hurt our 
thighs ; while at times the plunging horses tried to buck 
or bolt. It was worse when we came to some deep 
gully or ravine, breaking the line of fire. Into this we 
of course had to plunge, so as to get across to the fire 
on the other side. After the glare of the flame the 
blackness of the ravine was Stygian; we could see 
nothing, and simply spurred our horses into it any- 
where, taking our chances. Down we would go, stum- 
bling, sliding, and pitching, over cut banks and into 
holes and bushes, while the carcass bounded behind, 
now catching on a stump, and now fetching loose with 
a "pluck" that brought it full on the horses' haunches, 
driving them nearly crazy with fright. The pull up 
the opposite bank was, if anything, worse. 

By midnight the half -carcass was worn through; 
but we had stifled the fire in the comparatively level 
country to the eastward. Back we went to camp, drank 
huge draughts of muddy water, devoured roast ox-ribs, 
and dragged out the other half -carcass to fight the fire 
on the west. But after hours of wearing labor we found 
ourselves altogether baffled by the exceeding roughness 
of the ground. There was some little risk to us who 
were on horseback, dragging the carcass; we had to 
feel our way along knife-like ridges in the dark, one 
ahead and the other behind, while the steer dangled 
over the precipice on one side; and in going down the 
buttes and into the canyons only by extreme care could 
we avoid getting tangled in the ropes and rolling down 
in a heap. Moreover the fire was in such rough places 
that the carcass could not be twitched fairly over it, 
and so we could not put it out. Before dawn we were 
obliged to abandon our fruitless efforts and seek camp, 

80 



HUNTING THE PRONGBUCK 

stiffened and weary. From a hill we looked back 
through the pitchy night at the j&re we had failed to 
conquer. It had been broken into many lines by the 
roughness of the chasm-strewn and hilly country. Of 
these lines of flame some were in advance, some behind, 
some rushing forward in full blast and fury, some stand- 
ing still; here and there one wheeling toward a flank, 
or burning in a semicircle, round an isolated hill. Some 
of the lines were flickering out; gaps were showing in 
others. In the darkness it looked like the rush of a 
mighty army, bearing triumphantly onward, in spite 
of a resistance so stubborn as to break its formation 
into many fragments and cause each one of them to 
wage its own battle for victory or defeat. 

On the wide plains where the prongbuck dwells the 
hunter must sometimes face thirst, as well as fire and 
frost. The only time I ever really suffered from thirst 
was while hunting prongbuck. 

It was late in the summer. I was with the ranch 
wagon on the way to join a round-up, and as we were 
out of meat I started for a day's hunt. Before leaving 
in the morning I helped to haul the wagon across the 
river. It was fortunate I stayed, as it turned out. 
There was no regular ford where we made the crossing; 
we anticipated no trouble, as the water was very low, 
the season being dry. However, we struck a quicksand, 
in which the wagon settled, while the frightened horses 
floundered helplessly. All the riders at once got their 
ropes on the wagon and, hauling from the saddle, finally 
pulled it through. This took time; and it was ten 
o'clock when I rode away from the river, at which my 
horse and I had just drunk — our last drink for over 
twenty-four hours, as it turned out. 

After two or three hours' ride, up winding coulees 

81 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

and through the scorched desolation of patches of Bad 
Lands, I reached the rolhng prairie. The heat and 
drought had long burned the short grass dull brown; 
the bottoms of what had been pools were covered with 
hard, dry, cracked earth. The day was cloudless, and 
the heat oppressive. There were many antelope, but 
I got only one shot, breaking a buck's leg; and though 
I followed it for a couple of hours I could not overtake 
it. By this time it was late in the afternoon, and I was 
far away from the river; so I pushed for a creek, in the 
bed of which I had always found pools of water, espe- 
cially toward the head, as is usual with plains water- 
courses. To my chagrin, however, they all proved to 
be dry; and though I rode up the creek-bed toward 
the head, carefully searching for any sign of water, 
night closed on me before I found any. For two or 
three hours I stumbled on, leading my horse, in my 
fruitless search; then a tumble over a cut bank in the 
dark warned me that I might as well stay where I was 
for the rest of the warm night. Accordingly I unsaddled 
the horse, and tied him to a sage-brush; after a while 
he began to feed on the dewy grass. At first I was too 
thirsty to sleep. Finally I fell into slumber, and when 
I awoke at dawn I felt no thirst. For an hour or two 
more I continued my search for water in the creek-bed; 
then abandoned it and rode straight for the river. By 
the time we reached it my thirst had come back with 
redoubled force, my mouth was parched, and the horse 
was in quite as bad a plight; we rushed down to the 
brink, and it seemed as if we could neither of us ever 
drink our fill of the tepid, rather muddy water. Of 
course this experience was merely unpleasant; thirst is 
not a source of real danger in the plains country proper, 
whereas in the hideous deserts that extend from 

82 



HUNTING THE PRONGBUCK 

southern Idaho through Utah and Nevada to Arizona, 
it ever menaces with death the hunter and explorer. 

In the plains the weather is apt to be in extremes; 
the heat is tropical, the cold arctic, and the droughts 
are relieved by furious floods. These are generally 
most severe and lasting in the spring, after the melting 
of the snow; and fierce local freshets follow the oc- 
casional cloudbursts. The large rivers then become 
wholly impassable, and even the smaller are formidable 
obstacles. It is not easy to get cattle across a swollen 
stream where the current runs like a turbid mill-race 
over the bed of shifting quicksand. Once five of us 
took a thousand head of trail steers across the Little 
Missouri when the river was up, and it was no light 
task. The muddy current was boiling past the banks, 
covered with driftwood and foul yellow froth, and the 
frightened cattle shrank from entering it. At last, by 
hard riding, with much loud shouting and swinging of 
ropes, we got the leaders in, and the whole herd fol- 
lowed. After them we went in our turn, the horses 
swimming at one moment, and the next staggering and 
floundering through the quicksand. I was riding my 
pet cutting horse, Muley, which has the provoking 
habit of making great bounds where the water is just 
not deep enough for swimming; once he almost un- 
seated me. Some of the cattle were caught by the cur- 
rents and rolled over and over; most of these we were 
able, with the help of our ropes, to put on their feet 
again; only one was drowned, or rather choked in a 
quicksand. Many swam downstream, and in conse- 
quence struck a difficult landing, where the river ran 
under a cut bank; these we had to haul out with our 
ropes. Both men and horses were well tired by the 
time the whole herd was across. 

83 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

Although I have often had a horse down in quicksand 
or in crossing a swollen river, and have had to work 
hard to save him, I have never myself lost one under 
such circumstances. Yet once I saw the horse of one 
of my men drown under him directly in front of the 
ranch-house, while he was trying to cross the river. 
This was in early spring, soon after the ice had broken. 

When making long wagon trips over the great plains, 
antelope often offer the only source of meat-supply, 
save for occasional water-fowl, sage-fowl, and prairie- 
fowl — the sharp-tailed prairie-fowl, be it understood. 
This is the characteristic grouse of the cattle country; 
the true prairie-fowl is a bird of the farming land farther 
east. 

Toward the end of the summer of '92 I found it 
necessary to travel from my ranch to the Black Hills, 
some two hundred miles south. The ranch wagon went 
with me, driven by an all-round plainsman, a man of 
iron nerves and varied past, the sheriff of our county. 
He was an old friend of mine; at one time I had served 
as deputy sheriff for the northern end of the county. 
In the wagon we carried our food and camp kit, and 
our three rolls of bedding, each wrapped in a thick, 
nearly water-proof canvas sheet; we had a tent, but we 
never needed it. The load being light, the wagon was 
drawn by but a span of horses, a pair of wild runaways, 
tough, and good travellers. My foreman and I rode 
beside the wagon on our wiry, unkempt, unshod cattle 
ponies. They carried us all day at a rack, pace, single- 
foot, or slow lope, varied by rapid galloping when we 
made long circles after game; the trot, the favorite 
gait with Eastern park-riders, is disliked by all peoples 
who have to do much of their life-work in the saddle. 

The first day's ride was not attractive. The heat 

84 



HUNTING THE PRONGBUCK 

was intense and the dust stifling, as we had to drive 
some loose horses for the first few miles, and afterward 
to ride up and down the sandy river-bed, where the 
cattle had gathered, to look over some young steers we 
had put on the range the preceding spring. When we 
did camp it was by a pool of stagnant water, in a creek 
bottom, and the mosquitoes were a torment. Neverthe- 
less, as evening fell, it was pleasant to climb a little 
knoll near by and gaze at the rows of strangely colored 
buttes, grass-clad, or of bare earth and scoria, their soft 
reds and purples showing as through a haze, and their 
irregular outlines gradually losing their sharpness in 
the fading twilight. 

Next morning the weather changed, growing cooler, 
and we left the tangle of ravines and Bad Lands, strik- 
ing out across the vast sea-like prairies. Hour after 
hour, under the bright sun, the wagon drew slowly 
ahead, over the immense rolling stretches of short grass, 
dipping down each long slope until it reached the dry, 
imperfectly outlined creek-bed at the bottom — wholly 
devoid of water and without so much as a shrub of 
wood — and then ascending the gentle rise on the other 
side until at last it topped the broad divide, or water- 
shed, beyond which lay the shallow winding coulees of 
another creek system. From each rise of ground we 
looked far and wide over the sunlit prairie, with its 
interminable undulations. The sicklebill curlews, which 
in spring, while breeding, hover above the travelling 
horseman with ceaseless clamor, had for the most part 
gone southward. We saw only one small party of half 
a dozen birds; they paid little heed to us, but piped to 
one another, making short flights, and on alighting 
stood erect, first spreading and then folding and setting 
their wings with a slow, graceful motion. Little horned 

85 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

larks continually ran along the ruts of the faint wagon 
track, just ahead of the team, and twittered plaintively 
as they rose, while flocks of longspurs swept hither and 
thither in fitful, irregular flight. 

INIy foreman and I usually rode far off to one side 
of the wagon, looking out for antelope. Of these we 
at first saw few, but they grew more plentiful as we 
journeyed onward, approaching a big, scantily wooded 
creek, where I had found the pronghorn abundant in 
previous seasons. They were very wary and watchful, 
whether going singly or in small parties, and the lay 
of the land made it exceedingly difficult to get within 
range. The last time I had hunted in this neighbor- 
hood was in the fall, at the height of the rutting season. 
Prongbucks, even more than other game, seem fairly 
maddened by erotic excitement. At the time of my 
former hunt they were in ceaseless motion ; each master- 
buck being incessantly occupied in herding his harem 
and fighting would-be rivals, while single bucks chased 
single does as greyhounds chase hares, or else, if no does 
were in sight, from sheer excitement ran to and fro as 
if crazy, racing at full speed in one direction, then halt- 
ing, wheeling, and tearing back again just as hard as 
they could go. 

At this time, however, the rut was still some weeks 
off, and all the bucks had to do was to feed and keep 
a lookout for enemies. Try my best, I could not get 
within less than four or five hundred yards, and though 
I took a number of shots at these, or at even longer 
distances, I missed. If a man is out merely for a day's 
hunt, and has all the time he wishes, he will not scare 
the game and waste cartridges by shooting at such long 
ranges, preferring to spend half a day or more in patient 
waiting and careful stalking; but if he is travelling, 

86 



HUNTING THE PRONGBUCK 

and is therefore cramped for time, he must take his 
chances, even at the cost of burning a good deal of 
powder. 

I was finally helped to success by a characteristic 
freak of the game I was following. No other animals 
are as keen-sighted or are normally as wary as prong- 
horns; but no others are so whimsical and odd in their 
behavior at times, or so subject to fits of the most stupid 
curiosity and panic. Late in the afternoon, on topping 
a rise I saw two good bucks racing off about three 
hundred yards to one side; I sprang to the ground, 
and fired three shots at them in vain, as they ran like 
quarter-horses until they disappeared over a slight 
swell. In a minute, however, back they came, suddenly 
appearing over the crest of the same swell, immediately 
in front of me and, as I afterward found by pacing, 
some three hundred and thirty yards away. They stood 
side by side facing me, and remained motionless, un- 
heeding the crack of the Winchester; I aimed at the 
right-hand one, but a front shot of the kind, at such a 
distance, is rather difficult, and it was not until I fired 
for the fourth time that he sank back out of sight. I 
could not tell whether I had killed him, and took two 
shots at his mate as the latter went off, but without 
effect. Running forward, I found the first one dead, 
the bullet having gone through him lengthwise; the 
other did not seem satisfied even yet, and kept hanging 
round in the distance for some minutes, looking at us. 

I had thus bagged one prongbuck as the net outcome 
of the expenditure of fourteen cartridges. This was 
certainly not good shooting; but neither was it as bad 
as it would seem to the man inexperienced in antelope- 
hunting. When fresh meat is urgently needed, and 
when time is too short, the hunter who is after antelope 

87 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

in an open, flattish country must risk many long shots. 
In no other kind of hunting is there so much long- 
distance shooting, or so many shots fired for every 
head of game bagged. 

Throwing the buck into the wagon, we continued 
our journey across the prairie, no longer following any 
road, and before sunset jolted down toward the big 
creek for which we had been heading. There were 
many water-holes therein, and timber of considerable 
size; box-alder and ash grew here and there in clumps 
and fringes, beside the serpentine curves of the nearly 
dry torrent bed, the growth being thickest under the 
shelter of the occasional low bluffs. We drove down 
to a heavily grassed bottom, near a deep, narrow pool, 
with, at one end, that rarest of luxuries in the plains 
country, a bubbling spring of pure, cold water. With 
plenty of wood, delicious water, ample feed for the 
horses, and fresh meat we had every comfort and 
luxury incident to camp life in good weather. The 
bedding was tossed out on a smooth spot beside the 
wagon ; the horses were watered and tethered to picket- 
pins where the feed was best; water was fetched from 
the spring; a deep hole was dug for the fire, and the 
grass round about carefully burned off; and in a few 
moments the bread was baking in the Dutch oven, the 
potatoes were boiling, antelope-steaks were sizzling in 
the frying-pan, and the kettle was ready for the tea. 
After supper, eaten with the relish known well to every 
hard-working and successful hunter, we sat for half an 
hour or so round the fire, and then turned in under the 
blankets, pulled the tarpaulins over us, and listened 
drowsily to the wailing of the coyotes until we fell 
sound asleep. 

We determined to stay in this camp all day, so as to 

88 



HUNTING THE PRONGBUCK 

try and kill another prongbuck, as we would soon be 
past the good hunting-grounds. I did not have to go 
far for my game next morning, for soon after breakfast, 
while sitting on my canvas bag cleaning my rifle, the 
sheriff suddenly called to me that a bunch of antelope 
were coming toward us. Sure enough, there they were, 
four in number, rather over half a mile off, on the first 
bench of the prairie, two or three hundred yards back 
from the creek, leisurely feeding in our direction. In a 
minute or two they were out of sight, and I instantly 
ran along the creek toward them for a quarter of a mile, 
and then crawled up a short shallow coulee, close to the 
head of which they seemed likely to pass. When nearly 
at the end I cautiously raised my hatless head, peered 
through some straggling weeds, and at once saw the 
horns of the buck. He was a big fellow, about a hundred 
and twenty yards off; the others, a doe and two kids, 
were in front. As I lifted myself on my elbows he 
halted and turned his raised head toward me; the sun- 
light shone bright on his supple, vigorous body with 
its markings of sharply contrasted brown and white. 
I pulled trigger, and away he went; but I could see that 
his race was nearly run, and he feU after going a few 
hundred yards. 

Soon after this a wind-storm blew up so violent that 
we could hardly face it. In the late afternoon it died 
away, and I again walked out to hunt, but saw only 
does and kids, at which I would not shoot. As the sun 
set, leaving bars of amber and pale red in the western 
sky, the air became absolutely calm. In the waning 
evening the low, far-off ridges were touched with a 
violet light; then the hues grew sombre, and still dark- 
ness fell on the lonely prairie. 

Next morning we drove to the river, and kept near 

89 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

it for several days, most of the time following the tracks 
made by the heavy wagons accompanying the trail 
herds — this being one of the regular routes followed 
by the great throng of slow-moving cattle yearly driven 
from the south. At other times we made our own road. 
Twice or thrice we passed ranch-houses ; the men being 
absent on the round-up, they were shut, save one, which 
was inhabited by two or three lean Texan cow-punchers, 
with sunburned faces and reckless eyes, who had come 
up with a trail herd from the Cherokee strip. Once, 
near the old Sioux crossing, where the Dakota war bands 
used to ford the river on their forays against the Crows 
and the settlers along the Yellowstone, we met a large 
horse-herd. The tough, shabby, tired-looking animals, 
one or two of which were loaded with bedding and a 
scanty supply of food, were driven by three travel- 
worn, hard-faced men, with broad hats, chaps, and 
long pistols in their belts. They had brought the herd 
over plain and mountain pass all the way from far- 
distant Oregon. 

It was a wild, rough country, bare of trees save for a 
fringe of cottonwoods along the river and occasional 
clumps of cedar on the jagged, brown buttes; as we 
went farther the hills turned the color of chalk, and 
were covered with a growth of pine. We came upon 
acres of sunflowers as we journeyed southward; they 
are not as tall as they are in the rich bottom-lands of 
Kansas, where the splendid blossoms, on their strong 
stalks, stand as high as the head of a man on horseback. 

Though there were many cattle here, big game was 
scarce. However, I killed plenty of prairie-chickens and 
sage-hens for the pot; and as the sage-hens were still 
feeding largely on crickets and grasshoppers, and not 
exclusively on sage, they were just as good eating as 

90 



HUNTING THE PRONGBUCK 

the prairie-chickens. I used the rifle, cutting off their 
heads or necks, and, as they had to be shot on the 
ground, and often while in motion, or else while some 
distance away, it was more difficult than shooting off 
the heads of grouse in the mountains, where the birds 
sit motionless in trees. The head is a small mark, while 
to hit the body is usually to spoil the bird; so I found 
that I averaged three or four cartridges for every head 
neatly taken off, the remaining shots representing 
spoiled birds and misses. 

For the last sixty or seventy miles of our trip we left 
the river and struck off across a great, desolate gumbo 
prairie. There was no game, no wood for fuel, and the 
rare water-holes were far apart, so that we were glad 
when, as we toiled across the monotonous succession of 
long, swelling ridges, the dim, cloud-like mass looming 
vague and purple on the rim of the horizon ahead of us 
gradually darkened and hardened into the bold outline 
of the Black Hills. 



91 



VI 



AMONG THE HIGH HILLS; THE BIGHORN OR 
MOUNTAIN-SHEEP 

During the summer of 1886 I hunted chiefly to 
keep the ranch in meat. It was a very pleasant summer; 
although it was followed by the worst winter we ever 
witnessed on the plains. I was much at the ranch, where 
I had a good deal of writing to do ; but every week or 
two I left, to ride among the line camps, or to spend a 
few days on any round-up which happened to be in the 
neighborhood. 

These days of vigorous work among the cattle were 
themselves full of pleasure. At dawn we were in the 
saddle, the morning air cool in our faces; the red sun- 
rise saw us loping across the grassy reaches of prairie 
land, or climbing in single file among the rugged buttes. 
All forenoon we spent riding the long circle with the 
cow-punchers of the round-up; in the afternoon we 
worked the herd, cutting the cattle, with much break- 
neck galloping and dexterous halting and wheeling. 
Then came the excitement and hard labor of roping, 
throwing, and branding the wild and vigorous range 
calves; in a corral, if one was handy, otherwise in a 
ring of horsemen. Soon after nightfall we lay down, 
in a log hut or tent, if at a line camp; under the open 
sky, if with the round-up wagon. 

After ten days or so of such work, in which every man 
had to do his full share — for laggards and idlers, no 
matter who, get no mercy in the real and healthy de- 
mocracy of the round-up — I would go back to the ranch 
to turn to my books with added zest for a fortnight. 

92 



AMONG THE HIGH HILLS 

Yet even during these weeks at the ranch there was 
some outdoor work; for I was breaking two or three 
colts. I took my time, breaking them gradually and 
gently, not, after the usual cowboy fashion, in a hurry, 
by sheer main strength and rough riding, with the 
attendant danger to the limbs of the man and very 
probable ruin to the manners of the horse. We rose 
early; each morning I stood on the low-roofed veranda, 
looking out under the line of murmuring, glossy-leaved 
cottonwoods, across the shallow river, to see the sun 
flame above the line of bluffs opposite. In the evening 
I strolled off for an hour or two's walk, rifle in hand. 
The roomy, homelike ranch-house, with its log walls, 
shingled roof, and big chimneys and fireplaces, stands 
in a glade, in the midst of the thick forest, which covers 
half the bottom ; behind rises, bare and steep, the wall 
of peaks, ridges, and table-lands. 

During the summer in question, I once or twice shot 
a white tail buck right on this large bottom; once or 
twice I killed a blacktail in the hills behind, not a 
mile from the ranch-house. Several times I killed and 
brought in prongbucks, rising before dawn, and riding 
off on a good horse for an all-day's hunt in the rolling 
prairie country twelve or fifteen miles away. Occasion- 
ally I took the wagon and one of the men, driving to 
some good hunting-ground and spending a night or 
two; usually returning with two or three prongbucks, 
and once with an elk — but this was later in the fall. 
Not infrequently I went away by myself on horseback 
for a couple of days, when all the men were on the round- 
up, and when I wished to hunt thoroughly some country 
quite a distance from the ranch. I made one such hunt 
in late August, because I happened to hear that a small 
bunch of mountain-sheep were haunting a tract of very 

93 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

broken ground, with high hills, about fifteen miles away. 

I left the ranch early in the morning, riding my 
favorite hunting-horse, old Manitou. The blanket and 
oilskin slicker were rolled and strapped behind the 
saddle; for provisions I carried salt, a small bag of 
hardtack, and a little tea and sugar, with a metal cup 
in which to boil my water. The rifle and a score of 
cartridges in my woven belt completed my outfit. On 
my journey I shot two prairie-chickens from a covey 
in the bottom of a brush coulee. 

I rode more than six hours before reaching a good 
spot to camp. At first my route lay across grassy 
plateaus, and along smooth wooded coulees; but after 
a few miles the ground became very rugged and difficult. 
At last I got into the heart of the Bad Lands proper, 
where the hard, wrinkled earth was torn into shapes 
as sullen and grotesque as those of dreamland. The 
hills rose high, their barren flanks carved and channelled, 
their tops mere needles and knife crests. Bands of 
black, red, and purple varied the gray and yellow- 
brown of their sides; the tufts of scanty vegetation 
were dull green. Sometimes I rode my horse at the 
bottom of narrow washouts, between straight walls of 
clay, but a few feet apart; sometimes I had to lead 
him as he scrambled up, down, and across the sheer 
faces of the buttes. The glare from the bare clay walls 
dazzled the eye; the air was burning under the hot 
August sun. I saw nothing living except the rattle- 
snakes, of which there were very many. 

At last, in the midst of this devil's wilderness, I came 
on a lovely valley. A spring trickled out of a cedar 
canyon, and below this spring the narrow, deep ravine 
was green with luscious grass and was smooth for some 
hundreds of yards. Here I unsaddled, and turned old 

94 



AMONG THE HIGH HILLS 

Manitou loose to drink and feed at his leisure. At 
the edge of the dark cedar wood I cleared a spot for 
my bed, and drew a few dead sticks for the fire. Then 
I lay down and watched drowsily until the afternoon 
shadows filled the wild and beautiful gorge in which 
I was camped. This happened early, for the valley 
was very narrow and the hills on either hand were 
steep and high. 

Springing to my feet, I climbed the nearest ridge, 
and then made my way, by hard clambering, from 
peak to peak and from crest to crest, sometimes crossing 
and sometimes skirting the deep washouts and canyons. 
When possible I avoided appearing on the sky-line, and 
I moved with the utmost caution, walking in a wide 
sweep so as to hunt across and up-wind. There was 
much sheep sign, some of it fresh, though I saw none 
of the animals themselves; the square slots, with the 
indented marks of the toe points wide apart, contrasting 
strongly with the heart-shaped and delicate footprints 
of deer. The animals had, according to their habit, 
beaten trails along the summits of the higher crests; 
little side trails leading to any spur, peak, or other van- 
tage-point from which there was a wide outlook over 
the country round about. 

The bighorns of the Bad Lands, unlike those of the 
mountains, shift their range but little, winter or summer. 
Save in the breeding season, when each master-ram 
gets together his own herd, the ewes, lambs, and year- 
lings are apt to go in bands by themselves, while the 
males wander in small parties; now and then a very 
morose old fellow lives by himself, in some precipitous, 
out-of-the-way retreat. The rut begins with them 
much later than with deer; the exact time varies with 
the locality, but it is always after the bitter winter 

95 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

weather has set in. Then the old rams fight fiercely 
together, and on rare occasions utter a long grunting 
bleat or call. They are marvellous climbers, and dwell 
by choice always among cliffs and jagged, broken 
ground, whether wooded or not. An old bighorn ram 
is heavier than the largest buck; his huge, curved 
horns, massive yet supple build, and proud bearing 
mark him as one of the noblest beasts of the chase. 
He is wary; great skill and caution must be shown in 
approaching him ; and no one but a good climber, with 
a steady head, sound lungs, and trained muscles, can 
successfully hunt him in his own rugged fastnesses. 
The chase of no other kind of American big game ranks 
higher, or more thoroughly tests the manliest qualities 
of the hunter. 

I walked back to camp in the gloaming, taking care 
to reach it before it grew really dark; for in the Bad 
Lands it is entirely impossible to travel, or to find any 
given locality, after nightfall. Old Manitou had eaten 
his fill and looked up at me with pricked ears, and wise, 
friendly face as I climbed down the side of the cedar 
canyon ; then he came slowly toward me to see if I had 
not something for him. I rubbed his soft nose and gave 
him a cracker; then I picketed him to a solitary cedar, 
where the feed was good. Afterward I kindled a small 
fire, roasted both prairie-fowl, ate one, and put the 
other by for breakfast; and soon rolled myself in my 
blanket, with the saddle for a pillow, and the oilskin 
beneath. Manitou was munching the grass near by. I 
lay just outside the line of stiff black cedars ; the night 
air was soft in my face; I gazed at the shining and 
brilliant multitude of stars until my eyelids closed. 

The chill breath which comes before dawn awakened 
me. It was still and dark. Through the gloom I 

96 



AMONG THE HIGH HILLS 

could indistinctly make out the loom of the old horse, 
lying down. I was speedily ready, and groped and 
stumbled slowly up the hill, and then along its crest 
to a peak. Here I sat down and waited a quarter of 
an hour or so, until gray appeared in the east, and the 
dim light-streaks enabled me to walk farther. Before 
sunrise I was two miles from camp; then I crawled 
cautiously to a high ridge and, crouching behind it, 
scanned all the landscape eagerly. In a few minutes 
a movement about a third of a mile to the right, mid- 
way down a hill, caught my eye. Another glance showed 
me three white specks moving along the hillside. They 
were the white rumps of three fine mountain-sheep, on 
their way to drink at a little alkaline pool in the bottom 
of a deep, narrow valley. In a moment they went out 
of sight round a bend of the valley; and I rose and 
trotted briskly toward them, along the ridge. There 
were two or three deep gullies to cross, and a high 
shoulder over which to clamber; so I was out of breath 
when I reached the bend beyond which they had disap- 
peared. Taking advantage of a scrawny sage-brush 
as cover, I peeped over the edge, and at once saw the 
sheep, three big young rams. They had finished drink- 
ing and were standing beside the little miry pool, about 
three hundred yards distant. Slipping back I dropped 
down into the bottom of the valley, where a narrow 
washout zigzagged from side to side, between straight 
walls of clay. The pool was in the upper end of this 
washout, under a cut bank. 

An indistinct game trail, evidently sometimes used 
by both bighorn and blacktail, ran up this washout; 
the bottom was of clay, so that I walked noiselessly; 
and the crookedness of the washout's course afforded 
ample security against discovery by the sharp eyes of 

97 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the quarry. In a couple of minutes I stalked stealthily 
round the last bend, my rifle cocked and at the ready, 
expecting to see the rams by the pool. However, they 
had gone, and the muddy water was settling in their 
deep hoof-marks. Running on, I looked over the edge 
of the cut bank and saw them slowly quartering up 
the hillside, cropping the sparse tufts of coarse grass. 
I whistled, and as they stood at gaze I put a bullet into 
the biggest, a little too far aft of the shoulder, but 
ranging forward. He raced after the others, but soon 
fell behind, and turned off on his own line, at a walk, 
with dropping head. As he bled freely I followed his 
tracks, found him, very sick, in a washout a quarter 
of a mile beyond, and finished him with another shot. 
After dressing him, and cutting off the saddle and 
hams, as well as the head, I walked back to camp, 
breakfasted, and rode Manitou to where the sheep lay. 
Packing it securely behind the saddle, and shifting 
the blanket-roll to in front of the saddle-horn, I led 
the horse until we were clear of the Bad Lands; then 
mounted him, and was back at the ranch soon after 
midday. The mutton of a fat young mountain ram, 
at this season of the year, is delicious. 

Such quick success is rare in hunting sheep. Gener- 
ally each head has cost me several days of hard, faithful 
work; and more than once I have hunted over a week 
without any reward whatsoever. But the quarry is so 
noble that the ultimate triumph — sure to come, if the 
hunter will but persevere long enough — atones for all 
previous toil and failure. 

Once a lucky stalk and shot at a bighorn was almost 
all that redeemed a hunt in the Rockies from failure. 
I was high among the mountains at the time, but was 
dogged by ill luck; I had seen but little, and I had not 

98 



AMONG THE HIGH HILLS 

shot very well. One morning I rose early, and hunted 
steadily until midday without seeing anything. A 
mountain hunter was with me. At noon we sat down 
to rest and look over the country from behind a 
shield of dwarf evergreens on the brink of a mighty 
chasm. The rocks fell downward in huge cliffs, stern 
and barren; from far below rose the strangled roaring 
of the torrent, as the foaming masses of green and white 
water churned round the boulders in the stream-bed. 
Except this humming of the wild water, and the sough- 
ing of the pines, there was no sound. We were sitting 
on a kind of jutting promontory of rock, so that we 
could scan the cliffs far and near. First I took the 
glasses and scrutinized the ground almost rod by rod, 
for nearly half an hour; then my companion took them 
in turn. It is very hard to make out game, especially 
when lying down, and still; and it is curious to notice 
how, after fruitlessly scanning a country through the 
glasses for a considerable period, a herd of animals will 
suddenly appear in the field of vision as if by magic. 
In this case, while my companion held the glasses for 
the second time, a slight motion caught his eye; and 
looking attentively he made out, five or six hundred 
yards distant, a mountain ram lying among some loose 
rocks and small bushes at the head of a little grassy 
cove or nook, in a shallow break between two walls of 
the cliff. So well did the bluish gray of its body harmo- 
nize in tint with the rocks and shrubbery that it was 
some time before I could see it, even when pointed out 
to me. 

The wind was favorable, and we at once drew back 
and began a cautious stalk. It was impossible, owing 
to the nature of the cliffs above and below the bighorn's 
resting-place, to get a shot save by creeping along nearly 

99 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

on a level with him. Accordingly we worked our way 
down through a big cleft in the rocks, being forced to 
go very slowly and carefully lest we should start a loose 
stone; and at last reached a narrow terrace of rock and 
grass, along which we walked comparatively at our ease. 
Soon it dwindled away, and we then had to do our only 
difficult piece of climbing — a clamber for fifty or sixty 
feet across a steep cliff shoulder. Some little niches and 
cracks in the rock and a few projections and diminutive 
ledges on its surface barely enabled us to swarm across, 
with painstaking care — not merely to avoid alarming 
the game this time, but also to avoid a slip which would 
have proved fatal. Once across, we came on a long, 
grassy shelf, leading round a shoulder into the cleft 
where the ram lay. As I neared the end I crept forward 
on hands and knees, and then crawled flat, shoving the 
rifle ahead of me, until I rounded the shoulder and 
peered into the rift. As my eyes fell on the ram he 
sprang to his feet, with a clatter of loose stones, and 
stood facing me, some sixty yards off, his dark face and 
white muzzle brought out finely by the battered, curved 
horns. I shot into his chest, hitting him in the sticking- 
place; and after a few mad bounds he tumbled head- 
long, and fell a very great distance, unfortunately in- 
juring one horn. 

When much hunted, bighorn become the wariest of 
all American game, and their chase is then peculiarly 
laborious and exciting. But where they have known 
nothing of men, not having been molested by hunters, 
they are exceedingly tame. Professor John Bach Mc- 
Master informs me that in 1877 he penetrated to the 
Uintah Mountains of Wyoming, which were then al- 
most unknown to hunters; he found all the game very 
bold, and the wild sheep in particular so unsuspicious 

100 



AMONG THE HIGH HILLS 

that he could walk up to within short rifle-range of 
them in the open. 

On the high mountains bighorn occasionally get 
killed by a snowslide. My old friend, the hunter 
Woody, once saw a band which started such an ava- 
lanche by running along a steep sloping snow-field, it 
being in the spring; for several hundred yards it thun- 
dered at their heels, but by desperate racing they just 
managed to get clear. Woody was also once an eye- 
witness to the ravages the cougar commits among these 
wild sheep. He was stalking a band in the snow when 
he saw them suddenly scatter at a run in every direc- 
tion. Coming up, he found the traces of a struggle, and 
the track of a body being dragged through the snow, 
together with the round footmarks of the cougar; a 
little farther on lay a dead ewe, the blood flowing from 
the fang wounds in her throat. 



101 



VII 

MOUNTAIN GAME; THE WHITE GOAT 

Late one August I started on a trip to the Big Hole 
Basin, in western Montana, to hunt white goats. With 
me went a friend of many hunts, John WiUis, a tried 
mountain-man. 

We left the railroad at the squalid little hamlet of 
Divide, where we hired a team and wagon from a 
"busted" granger, suspected of being a Mormon, who 
had failed, even with the help of irrigation, in raising 
a crop. The wagon was in fairly good order; the har- 
ness was rotten, and needed patching with ropes; while 
the team consisted of two spoiled horses, overworked 
and thin, but full of the devil the minute they began 
to pick up condition. However, on the frontier one 
soon grows to accept little facts of this kind with bland 
indifference ; and Willis was not only an expert teamster, 
but possessed that inexhaustible fertility of resource 
and unfailing readiness in an emergency so character- 
istic of the veteran of the border. Through hard ex- 
perience he had become master of plainscraft and wood- 
craft, skilled in all frontier lore. 

For a couple of days we jogged up the valley of the 
Big Hole River, along the mail road. At night we 
camped under our wagon. At the mouth of the stream 
the valley was a mere gorge, but it broadened steadily 
the farther up we went, till the rapid river wound 
through a wide expanse of hilly, treeless prairie. On 
each side the mountains rose, their lower flanks and 
the foot-hills covered with the evergreen forest. We 
got milk and bread at the scattered log houses of the 

102 



MOUNTAIN GAME 

few settlers; and for meat we shot sage-fowl, which 
abounded. They were feeding on grasshoppers at this 
time, and the flesh, especially of the young birds, was 
as tender and well tasting as possible; whereas, when 
we again passed through the valley in September, we 
found the birds almost uneatable, being fairly bitter 
with sage. Like all grouse, they are far tamer earlier in 
the season than later, being very wild in winter; and, 
of course, they are boldest where they are least hunted ; 
but for some unexplained reason they are always tamer 
than the sharptail prairie-fowl which are to be found 
in the same locality. 

Finally we reached the neighborhood of the Battle 
Ground, where a rude stone monument commemorates 
the bloody drawn fight between General Gibbons's 
soldiers and the Nez Perces warriors of Chief Joseph. 
Here, on the third day of our journey, we left the beaten 
road and turned toward the mountains, following an 
indistinct trail made by wood-choppers. We met with 
our full share of the usual mishaps incident to prairie 
travel; and toward evening our team got mired in 
crossing a slough. We attempted the crossing with 
some misgivings, which were warranted by the result; 
for the second plunge of the horses brought them up 
to their bellies in the morass, where they stuck. It was 
freezing cold, with a bitter wind blowing, and the bog 
holes were skimmed with ice; so that we passed a 
thoroughly wretched two hours while freeing the horses 
and unloading the wagon. However, we eventually got 
across; my companion preserving an absolutely un- 
rufiled temper throughout, perseveringly whistling the 
"Arkansaw Traveller." At one period, when we were 
up to our waists in the icy mud, it began to sleet and 
hail, and I muttered that I would "rather it didn't 

103 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

storm"; whereat he stopped whistHng for a moment 
to make the laconic rejoinder: "We're not having our 
rathers this trip." 

At nightfall we camped among the willow bushes 
by a little brook. For fire-wood we had only dead 
willow sticks; they made a hot blaze which soon died 
out; and as the cold grew intense, we rolled up in our 
blankets as soon as we had eaten our supper. The cli- 
mate of the Big Hole Basin is Alpine; that night, though 
it was the 20th of August, the thermometer sank to 
10° F. 

Early next morning we struck camp, shivering with 
cold as we threw the stiff, frozen harness on the horses. 
We soon got among the foot-hills, where the forest was 
open and broken by large glades, forming what is called 
a park country. The higher we went the smaller grew 
the glades and the denser the woodland; and it began 
to be very difficult to get the wagon forward. In many 
places one man had to go ahead to pick out the way 
and if necessary do a little chopping and lopping with 
the axe, while the other followed driving the team. 
At last we were brought to a standstill, and pitched 
camp beside a rapid, alder-choked brook in the upper- 
most of a series of rolling glades, hemmed in by moun- 
tains and the dense coniferous forest. Our tent stood 
under a grove of pines, close to the brook; at night we 
built in front of it a big fire of crackling, resinous logs. 
Our goods were sheltered by the wagon, or covered 
with a tarpaulin; we threw down sprays of odorous 
evergreens to make a resting-place for our bedding; 
we built small scaffolds on which to dry the flesh of 
elk and deer. In an hour or two we had round us all 
the many real comforts of such a little wilderness home. 

Whoever has long roamed and hunted in the wilder- 

104 



MOUNTAIN GAME 

ness always cherishes with wistful pleasure the memory 
of some among the countless camps he has made. The 
camp by the margin of the clear, mountain-hemmed 
lake; the camp in the dark and melancholy forest, 
where the gusty wind booms through the tall pine-tops ; 
the camp under gnarled cottonwoods, on the bank of 
a shrunken river, in the midst of endless grassy prairies 
— of these, and many like them, each has had its own 
charm. Of course in hunting one must expect much 
hardship and repeated disappointment; and in many 
a camp, bad weather, lack of shelter, hunger, thirst, or 
ill success with game, renders the days and nights irk- 
some and trying. Yet the hunter worthy of the name 
always willingly takes the bitter if by so doing he can 
get the sweet, and gladly balances failure and success, 
spurning the poorer souls who know neither. 

We turned our horses loose, hobbling one; and as 
we did not look after them for several days, nothing but 
my companion's skill as a tracker enabled us to find 
them again. There was a spell of warm weather which 
brought out a few of the big bulldog flies, which drive 
a horse — or indeed a man — nearly frantic; we were in 
the haunts of these dreaded and terrible scourges, which 
up to the beginning of August render it impossible to 
keep stock of any description unprotected where they 
abound, but which are never formidable after the first 
frost. In many parts of the wilderness these pests, or 
else the incredible swarms of mosquitoes, black-flies, 
and buffalo-gnats render life not worth living during the 
last weeks of spring and the early months of summer. 

There were elk and deer in the neighborhood; also 
ruffed, blue, and spruce grouse; so that our camp was 
soon stocked with meat. Early one morning while 
Willis was washing in the brook, a little black bear 

105 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

thrust its sharp nose through the alders a few feet from 
him, and then hastily withdrew and was seen no more. 
The smaller wild folk were more familiar. As usual in 
the northern mountains, the gray moose-birds and vol- 
uble, nervous little chipmunks made themselves at 
home in the camp. Parties of chickadees visited us 
occasionally. A family of flying squirrels lived over- 
head in the grove; and at nightfall they swept noise- 
lessly from tree to tree, in long, graceful curves. There 
were sparrows of several kinds moping about in the 
alders; and now and then one of them would sing a 
few sweet, rather mournful bars. 

After several days' preliminary exploration we started 
on foot for white goat. We took no packs with us, each 
carrying merely his jacket, with a loaf of bread and a 
paper of salt thrust into the pockets. Our aim was to 
get well to one side of a cluster of high, bare peaks, 
and then to cross them and come back to camp; we 
reckoned that the trip would take three days. 

All the first day we tramped through dense woods 
and across and around steep mountain spurs. We 
caught glimpses of two or three deer and a couple of 
elk, all does or fawns, however, which we made no effort 
to molest. Late in the afternoon we stumbled across 
a family of spruce-grouse, which furnished us material 
for both supper and breakfast. The mountain-men call 
this bird the fool-hen; and most certainly it deserves 
the name. The members of this particular flock, con- 
sisting of a hen and her three-parts grown chickens, 
acted with a stupidity unwonted even for their kind. 
They were feeding on the ground among some young 
spruce, and on our approach flew up and perched in the 
branches four or five feet above our heads. There they 
stayed, uttering a low, complaining whistle, and showed 

106 



MOUNTAIN GAME 

not the slightest suspicion when we came underneath 
them with long sticks and knocked four off their perches 
— for we did not wish to alarm any large game that 
might be in the neighborhood by firing. One particular 
bird was partially saved from my first blow by the 
intervening twigs; however, it merely flew a few yards, 
and then sat with its bill open — having evidently been 
a little hurt — until I came up and knocked it over with 
a better directed stroke. 

Spruce-grouse are plentiful in the mountain forests 
of the northern Rockies, and, owing to the ease with 
which they are killed, they have furnished me my usual 
provender when off on trips of this kind, where I carried 
no pack. They are marvellously tame and stupid. 
The young birds are the only ones I have ever killed 
in this manner with a stick; but even a full-plumaged 
old cock in September is easily slain with a stone by 
any one who is at all a good thrower. A man who 
has played much baseball need never use a gun when 
after spruce-grouse. They are the smallest of the 
grouse kind; the cock is very handsome, with red 
eyebrows and dark, glossy plumage. Moreover, he is as 
brave as he is stupid and good-looking, and in the love 
season becomes fairly crazy; at such time he will oc- 
casionally make a feint of attacking a man, strutting, 
fluttering, and ruffling his feathers. The flesh of the 
spruce-grouse is not so good as that of his ruffed and 
blue kinsfolk; and in winter, when he feeds on spruce 
buds, it is ill tasting. I have never been able to under- 
stand why closely allied species, under apparently the 
same surroundings, should differ so radically in such 
important traits as wariness and capacity to escape 
from foes. Yet the spruce-grouse in this respect shows 
the most marked contrast to the blue grouse and the 

107 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

ruffed grouse. Of course all three kinds vary greatly 
in their behavior according as they do or do not live in 
localities where they have been free from man's perse- 
cutions. The ruffed grouse, a very wary game-bird in 
all old-settled regions, is often absurdly tame in the 
wilderness; and under persecution even the spruce- 
grouse gains some little wisdom; but the latter never 
becomes as wary as the former, and under no circum- 
stances is it possible to outwit the ruffed grouse by 
such clumsy means as serve for his simple-minded 
brother. There is a similar difference between the sage- 
fowl and prairie-fowl, in favor of the latter. It is odd 
that the largest and the smallest kinds of grouse found 
in the United States should be the tamest; and also 
the least savory. 

After tramping all day through the forest, at night- 
fall we camped in its upper edge, just at the foot of the 
steep rock walls of the mountain. We chose a sheltered 
spot where the small spruce grew thick and there was 
much dead timber; and as the logs, though long, were 
of little girth, we speedily dragged together a number 
sufficient to keep the fire blazing all night. Having 
drunk our full at a brook, we cut two forked willow 
sticks, and then each plucked a grouse, split it, thrust 
the willow fork into it, and roasted it before the fire. 
Besides this we had salt, and bread; moreover we were 
hungry and healthily tired; so the supper seemed, and 
was, delicious. Then we turned up the collars of our 
jackets, and lay down, to pass the night in broken 
slumber; each time the fire died down the chill waked 
us, and we rose to feed it with fresh logs. 

At dawn we rose, and cooked and ate the two re- 
maining grouse. Then we turned our faces upward, 
and passed a day of severe toil in climbing over the 

108 



MOUNTAIN GAME 

crags. Mountaineering is very hard work; and when 
we got high among the peaks, where snow filled the 
rifts, the thinness of the air forced me to stop for breath 
every few hundred yards of the ascent. We found much 
sign of white goats, but in spite of steady work and in- 
cessant careful scanning of the rocks, we did not see 
our quarry until early in the afternoon. 

We had clambered up one side of a steep saddle of 
naked rock, some of the scarped ledges being difficult, 
and indeed dangerous, of ascent. From the top of the 
saddle a careful scrutiny of the neighboring peaks 
failed to reveal any game, and we began to go down 
the other side. The mountain fell away in a succession 
of low cliffs, and we had to move with the utmost 
caution. In letting ourselves down from ledge to ledge, 
one would hold the guns until the other got safe footing, 
and then pass them down to him. In many places we 
had to work our way along the cracks in the faces of 
the frost-riven rocks. At last, just as we reached a 
little smooth shoulder, my companion said, pointing 
down beneath us: "Look at the white goat!" 

A moment or two passed before I got my eyes on 
it. We were looking down into a basin-like valley, sur- 
rounded by high mountain chains. At one end of the 
basin was a low pass, where the ridge was cut up with 
the zigzag trails made by the countless herds of game 
which had travelled it for many generations. At the 
other end was a dark gorge, through which a stream 
foamed. The floor of the basin was bright emerald 
green, dotted with darker bands where belts of fir-trees 
grew; and in its middle lay a little lake. 

At last I caught sight of the goat, feeding on a 
terrace rather over a hundred and twenty-five yards 
below me. I promptly fired, but overshot. The goat 

109 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

merely gave a few jumps and stopped. My second 
bullet went through its lungs; but fearful lest it might 
escape to some inaccessible cleft or ledge I fired again, 
missing; and yet again, breaking its back. Down it 
went, and the next moment began to roll over and over, 
from ledge to ledge. I greatly feared it would break 
its horns; an annoying and oft-recurring incident of 
white-goat shooting, where the nature of the ground 
is such that the dead quarry often falls hundreds of 
feet, its body being torn to ribbons by the sharp crags. 
However, in this case the goat speedily lodged un- 
harmed in a Httle dwarf evergreen. 

Hardly had I fired my fourth shot when my com- 
panion again exclaimed: "Look at the white goats! 
Look at the white goats!" Glancing in the direction 
in which he pointed, I speedily made out four more 
goats standing in a bunch rather less than a hundred 
yards off, to one side of my former line of fire. They 
were all looking up at me. They stood on a slab of 
white rock, with which the color of their fleece harmo- 
nized well; and their black horns, muzzles, eyes, and 
hoofs looked like dark dots on a light-colored surface, 
so that it took me more than one glance to determine 
what they were. White goat invariably run uphill 
when alarmed, their one idea seeming to be to escape 
danger by getting above it; for their brute foes are 
able to overmatch them on anything like level ground, 
but are helpless against them among the crags. Almost 
as soon as I saw them these four started up the moun- 
tain, nearly in my direction, while I clambered down 
and across to meet them. They halted at the foot of a 
cliff, and I at the top, being unable to see them; but 
in another moment they came bounding and cantering 
up the sheer rocks, not moving quickly, but traversing 

110 



MOUNTAIN GAME 

the most seemingly impossible places by main strength 
and surefootedness. As they broke by me, some thirty 
yards off, I fired two shots at the rearmost, an old buck, 
somewhat smaller than the one I had just killed; and 
he rolled down the mountain dead. Two of the others, 
a yearling and a kid, showed more alarm than their 
elders, and ran off at a brisk pace. The remaining one, 
an old she, went off a hundred yards, and then deliber- 
ately stopped and turned round to gaze at us for a 
couple of minutes ! Verily the white goat is the fool- 
hen among beasts of the chase. 

Having skinned them and cut off the heads, we 
walked rapidly onward, slanting down the mountain- 
side, and then over and down the pass of the game trails; 
for it was growing late and we wished to get well down 
among the timber before nightfall. On the way an 
eagle came soaring overhead, and I shot at it twice 
without success. Having once killed an eagle on the 
wing with a rifle, I always have a lurking hope that 
some time I may be able to repeat the feat. I revenged 
myself for the miss by knocking a large blue goshawk 
out of the top of a blasted spruce, where it was sitting 
in lazy confidence, its crop stuffed with rabbit and 
grouse. 

A couple of hours' hard walking brought us down 
to timber; just before dusk we reached a favorable 
camping spot in the forest, beside a brook, with plenty 
of dead trees for the night fire. Moreover, the spot 
fortunately yielded us our supper, too, in the shape of 
a flock of young spruce-grouse, of which we shot off 
the heads of a couple. Immediately afterward I ought 
to have procured our breakfast, for a cock of the same 
kind suddenly flew down near by; but it was getting 
dark, I missed with the first shot, and with the second 

111 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

must have merely creased the neck, for though the 
tough old bird dropped, it fluttered and ran off among 
the underbrush and escaped. 

We broiled our two grouse before our fire, dragged 
plenty of logs into a heap beside it, and then lay down 
to sleep fitfully, an hour or so at a time, throughout the 
night. We were continually wakened by the cold, 
when we had to rise and feed the flames. In the early 
morning we again started, walking for some time along 
the fresh trail made by a large band of elk, cows and 
calves. We thought we knew exactly the trend and 
outlet of the valley in which we were, and that therefore 
we could tell where the camp was; but, as so often 
happens in the wilderness, we had not reckoned aright, 
having passed over one mountain spur too many, and 
entered the ravines of an entirely different watercourse 
system. In consequence we became entangled in a 
network of hills and valleys, making circle after circle 
to find our bearings; and we only reached camp after 
twelve hours' tiresome tramp without food. 

On another occasion I shot a white goat while it was 
in a very curious and characteristic attitude. I was 
hunting, again with an old mountain-man as my sole 
companion, among the high mountains of the Kootenai 
country, near the border of Montana and British Co- 
lumbia. We had left our main camp, pitched by the 
brink of the river, and were struggling wearily on foot 
through the tangled forest and over the precipitous 
mountains, carrying on our backs light packs, consisting 
of a little food and two or three indispensable utensils, 
wrapped in our blankets. One day we came to the 
foot of a great chain of bare rocks, and climbed la- 
boriously to its crest, up clift' after cliff, some of which 
were almost perpendicular. Swarming round certain of 

112 



MOUNTAIN GAME 

the rock shoulders, crossing an occasional sheer chasm, 
and in many places clinging to steep, smooth walls by 
but slight holds, we reached the top. The climbing 
at such a height was excessively fatiguing; moreover, 
it was in places dijBScult and even dangerous. Of course 
it was not to be compared to the ascent of towering, 
glacier-bearing peaks, such as those of the Selkirks and 
Alaska, where climbers must be roped to one another 
and carry ice-axes. 

Once at the top we walked very cautiously, being 
careful not to show ourselves against the sky-line, and 
scanning the mountainsides through our glasses. At 
last we made out three goats, grazing unconcernedly 
on a narrow, grassy terrace, which sloped abruptly to 
the brink of a high precipice. They were not very far 
off, and there was a little rock spur above them which 
offered good cover for a stalk; but we had to crawl 
so slowly, partly to avoid falling and partly to avoid 
detaching loose rocks, that it was nearly an hour before 
we got in a favorable position above them, and some 
seventy yards off. The frost-disintegrated mountains 
in which they live are always sending down showers of 
detached stones, so that the goats are not very sensitive 
to the noise; still, they sometimes pay instantaneous 
heed to it, especially if the sound is repeated. 

WTien I peeped over the little ridge of rock, shoving 
my rifle carefully ahead of me, I found that the goats 
had finished feeding and were preparing to leave the 
slope. The old billy saw me at once, but evidently 
could not quite make me out. Thereupon, gazing in- 
tently at me, he rose gravely on his haunches, sitting up 
almost in the attitude of a dog when begging. I know 
no other horned animal that ever takes this position. 

As I fired he rolled backward, slipped down the grassy 

113 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

slope, and tumbled over the brink of the cliff, while 
the other two, a she and a kid, after a moment's panic- 
struck pause, and a bewildered rush in the wrong 
direction, made off up a little rocky gully, and were 
out of sight in a moment. To my chagrin, when I 
finally reached the carcass, after a tedious and circui- 
tous climb to the foot of the cliff, I found both horns 
broken off. 

It was late in the afternoon, and we clambered down 
to the border of a little marshy Alpine lake, which we 
reached in an hour or so. Here we made our camp 
about sunset, in a grove of stunted spruces, which 
furnished plenty of dead timber for the fire. There 
were many white-goat trails leading to this lake, and 
from the slide rock round about we heard the shrill 
whistling of hoary rock woodchucks, and the querulous 
notes of the little conies — two of the sounds most 
familiar to the white-goat hunter. These conies had 
gathered heaps of dried plants, and had stowed them 
carefully away for winter use in the cracks between the 
rocks. 

While descending the mountain we came on a little 
pack of snow-grouse or mountain ptarmigan, birds 
which, save in winter, are always found above timber- 
line. They were tame and fearless, though hard to 
make out as they ran among the rocks, cackling noisily, 
with their tails cocked aloft; and we had no difficulty 
in killing four, which gave us a good breakfast and 
supper. Old white goats are intolerably musky in 
flavor, there being a very large musk-pod between the 
horn and ear. The kids are eatable, but of course 
are rarely killed; the shot being usually taken at the 
animal with best horns — and the shes and young of any 
game should only be killed when there is a real necessity. 

114 



MOUNTAIN GAME 

These two hunts may be taken as samples of most 
expeditions after white goat. There are places where 
the goats live in mountains close to bodies of water, 
either ocean fiords or large lakes; and in such places 
canoes can be used, to the greatly increased comfort 
and lessened labor of the hunters. In other places, 
where the mountains are low and the goats spend all 
the year in the timber, a pack-train can be taken right 
up to the hunting-grounds. But generally one must 
go on foot, carrying everything on one's back, and at 
night lying out in the open or under a brush lean-to; 
meanwhile living on spruce-grouse and ptarmigan, with 
an occasional meal of trout and, in times of scarcity, 
squirrels or anything else. Such a trip entails severe 
fatigue and not a little hardship. The actual hunting, 
also, implies difficult and laborious climbing, for the 
goats live by choice among the highest and most in- 
accessible mountains; though where they are found, 
as they sometimes are, in comparatively low forest-clad 
ranges, I have occasionally killed them with little 
trouble by lying in wait beside the well-trodden game 
trails they make in the timber. 

In any event the hard work is to get up to the 
grounds where the game is found. Once the animals 
are spied, there is but little call for the craft of the still- 
hunter in approaching them. Of all American game 
the white goat is the least wary and most stupid. In 
places where it is much hunted it of course gradually 
grows wilder and becomes difficult to approach and 
kill; and much of its silly tameness is doubtless due 
to the inaccessible nature of its haunts, which ren- 
ders it ordinarily free from molestation ; but aside from 
this it certainly seems as if it was naturally less wary 
than either deer or mountain-sheep. The great point 

115 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

is to get above it. All its foes live in the valleys, and 
while it is in the mountains, if they strive to approach 
it at all, they must do so from below. It is in conse- 
quence always on the watch for danger from beneath; 
but it is easily approached from above, and then, as it 
generally tries to escape by running uphill, the hunter 
is very apt to get a shot. 

Its chase is thus laborious rather than exciting; and 
to my mind it is less attractive than is the pursuit of 
most of our other game. Yet it has an attraction of 
its own, after all; while the grandeur of the scenery 
amid which it must be carried on, the freedom and 
hardihood of the life, and the pleasure of watching the 
queer habits of the game, all combine to add to the 
hunter's enjoyment. 

White goats are self-confident, pugnacious beings. 
An old billy, if he discovers the presence of a foe without 
being quite sure what it is, often refuses to take flight, 
but walks around, stamping, and shaking his head. The 
needle-pointed black horns are alike in both sexes, save 
that the males' are a trifle thicker; and they are most 
effective weapons when wielded by the muscular neck 
of a resolute and wicked old goat. They wound like 
stilettos, and their bearer is in consequence a much 
more formidable foe in a hand-to-hand struggle than 
either a branching-antlered deer or a mountain ram, 
with his great battering head. The goat does not butt; 
he thrusts. If he can cover his back by a tree-trunk 
or boulder he can stand off most carnivorous animals 
no larger than he is. 

Though awkward in movement, and lacking all 
semblance of lightness or agility, goats are excellent 
climbers. One of their queer traits is their way of 
getting their fore hoofs on a slight ledge, and then 

116 



MOUNTAIN GAME 

drawing or lifting their bodies up by simple muscular 
exertion, stretching out their elbows much as a man 
would. They do a good deal of their climbing by 
strength and command over their muscles; although 
they are also capable of making astonishing bounds. 
If a cliff surface has the least slope, and shows any 
inequalities or roughness whatever, goats can go up 
and down it with ease. With their short, stout legs, 
and large, sharp-edged hoofs they clamber well over 
ice, passing and repassing the mountains at a time 
when no man would so much as crawl over then. They 
bear extreme cold with indifference, but are intolerant 
of much heat; even when the weather is cool they are 
apt to take their noontide rest in caves; I have seen 
them solemnly retiring, for this purpose, to great rents 
in the rocks at a time when my own teeth chattered 
because of the icy wind. 

They go in small flocks; sometimes in pairs or little 
family parties. After the rut the bucks often herd by 
themselves, or go off alone, while the young and the 
shes keep together throughout the winter and the spring. 
The young are generally brought forth above timber- 
line, or at its uppermost edge, save of course in those 
places where the goats live among the mountains wooded 
to the top. Throughout the summer they graze on 
the short mountain plants which in many places form 
regular mats above timber-line ; the deep winter snows 
drive them low down in the wooded valleys and force 
them to subsist by browsing. They are so strong that 
they plough their way readily through deep drifts; 
and a flock of goats at this season, when their white 
coat is very long and thick, if seen waddling off through 
the snow, have a comical likeness to so many diminutive 
polar bears. Of course they could easily be run down 

117 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

in the snow by a man on snow-shoes, in the plain; but 
on a mountainside there are always bare rocks and 
cliff shoulders, glassy with winter ice, which give either 
goats or sheep an advantage over their snow-shoe-bear- 
ing foes that deer and elk lack. Whenever the goats 
pass the winter in woodland they leave plenty of sign 
in the shape of patches of wool clinging to all the sharp 
twigs and branches against which they have brushed. 
In the spring they often form the habit of drinking at 
certain low pools, to which they beat deep paths; and 
at this season, and to a less extent in the summer and 
fall, they are very fond of frequenting mineral licks. 
At any such lick the ground is tramped bare of vege- 
tation, and is filled with pits and hollows, actually 
dug by the tongues of innumerable generations of ani- 
mals; while the game paths lead from them in a dozen 
directions. 

In spite of the white goat's pugnacity, its clumsiness 
renders it no very difficult prey when taken unawares 
by either wolf or cougar, its two chief enemies. They 
cannot often catch it when it is above timber-line; but 
it is always in sore peril from them when it ventures 
into the forest. Bears, also, prey upon it in the early 
spring; and one midwinter my friend Willis found a 
wolverene eating a goat which it had killed in a snow- 
drift at the foot of a cliff. The savage little beast 
growled and showed fight when he came near the body. 
Eagles are great enemies of the young kids, as they are 
of the young lambs of the bighorn. 

The white goat is the only game beast of America 
which has not decreased in numbers since the arrival 
of the white man. Although in certain localities it 
is now decreasing, yet, taken as a whole, it is probably 
quite as plentiful now as it was fifty years back; for in 

118 



MOUNTAIN GAME 

the early part of the present century there were Indian 
tribes who hunted it perseveringly to make the skins 
into robes, whereas now they get blankets from the 
traders and no longer persecute the goats. The early 
trappers and mountain-men knew but little of the ani- 
mal. Whether they were after beaver or were hunting 
big game or were merely exploring, they kept to the 
valleys; there was no inducement for them to climb 
to the tops of the mountains; so it resulted that there 
was no animal with which the old hunters were so 
unfamiliar as with the white goat. The professional 
hunters of to-day likewise bother it but little; they do 
not care to undergo severe toil for an animal with worth- 
less flesh and a hide of little value — for it is only in the 
late fall and winter that the long hair and fine wool 
give the robe any beauty. 

So the quaint, sturdy, musky beasts, with their queer 
and awkward ways, their boldness and their stupidity, 
with their white coats and big black hoofs, black muz- 
zles, and sharp, gently curved, span-long black horns, 
have held their own well among the high mountains 
that they love. In the Rockies and the coast ranges 
they abound from Alaska south to Montana, Idaho, 
and Washington; and here and there isolated colonies 
are found among the high mountains to the southward, 
in Wyoming, Colorado, even in New Mexico, and, 
strangest of all, in one or two spots among the barren 
coast mountains of southern California. Long after 
the elk has followed the buffalo to the happy hunting- 
grounds the white goat will flourish among the towering 
and glacier-riven peaks and, grown wary with suc- 
ceeding generations, will furnish splendid sport to those 
hunters who are both good riflemen and hardy 
cragsmen. 

119 



VIII 

HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS; THE CARIBOU 

In September, 1888, I was camped on the shores of 
Kootenai Lake, having with me as companions John 
WiUis and an impassive-looking Indian named Ammal. 
Coming across through the dense coniferous forests of 
northern Idaho we had struck the Kootenai River. 
Then we went down with the current as it wound in 
half-circles through a long alluvial valley of mixed 
marsh and wood land, hemmed in by lofty mountains. 
The lake itself, when we reached it, stretched straight 
away like a great fiord, a hundred miles long and about 
three in breadth. The frowning and rugged Selkirks 
came down sheer to the water's edge. So straight were 
the rock walls that it was difficult for us to land with 
our bateau, save at the places where the rapid moun- 
tain torrents entered the lake. As these streams of 
swift water broke from their narrow gorges they made 
little deltas of level ground with beaches of fine white 
sand; and the stream-banks were edged with cotton- 
wood and poplar, their shimmering foliage relieving 
the sombre coloring of the evergreen forest. 

Close to such a brook, from which we drew strings 
of large silver trout, our tent was pitched, just within 
the forest. From between the trunks of two gnarled, 
wind-beaten trees, a pine and a cotton wood, we looked 
out across the lake. The little bay in our front, in which 
we bathed and swam, was sometimes glassily calm; and 
again heavy wind squalls arose, and the surf beat 
strongly on the beach where our boat was drawn up. 
Now and then great checker-back loons drifted buoy- 

120 



HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS 

antly by, stopping with bold curiosity to peer at the 
white tent gleaming between the tree-trunks, and at 
the smoke curling above their tops; and they called to 
one another, both at dawn and in the daytime, with 
shrieks of unearthly laughter. Troops of noisy, parti- 
colored Clark's crows circled over the tree-tops or hung 
from among the pine-cones; jays and chickadees came 
round the camp, and woodpeckers hammered lustily in 
the dead timber. Two or three times parties of Indians 
passed down the lake, in strangely shaped bark canoes, 
with peaked, projecting prows and sterns; craft utterly 
unlike the graceful, feather-floating birches so beloved 
by both the red and the white woodsmen of the North- 
east. Once a couple of white men, in a dugout or 
pirogue made out of a cottonwood log, stopped to get 
lunch. They were mining prospectors, French-Cana- 
dians by birth, but beaten into the usual frontier-min- 
ing stamp; doomed to wander their lives long, ever 
hoping, in the quest for metal wealth. 

With these exceptions there was nothing to break 
the silent loneliness of the great lake. Shrouded as we 
were in the dense forest, and at the foot of the first steep 
hills, we could see nothing of the country on the side 
where we were camped; but across the water the im- 
mense mountain masses stretched away from our vision, 
range upon range, until they turned to a glittering 
throng of ice peaks and snow-fields, the feeding-beds of 
glaciers. Between the lake and the snow range were 
chains of gray rock peaks, and the mountainsides and 
valleys were covered by the primeval forest. The woods 
were on fire across the lake from our camp, burning 
steadily. At night the scene was very grand, as the fire 
worked slowly across the mountainsides in immense 
zigzags of quivering red; while at times isolated pines 

121 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

of unusual size kindled, and flamed for hours, like the 
torches of a giant. Finally the smoke grew so thick as 
to screen from our views the grand landscape opposite. 

We had come down from a week's fruitless hunting 
in the mountains; a week of excessive toil, in a country 
where we saw no game — for in our ignorance we had 
wasted time, not going straight back to the high ranges 
from which the game had not yet descended. After 
three or four days of rest, and of feasting on trout — 
a welcome relief to the monotony of frying-pan bread 
and coarse salt pork — we were ready for another trial; 
and early one morning we made the start. Having to 
pack everything for a fortnight's use on our backs 
through an excessively rough country, we of course 
travelled as light as possible, leaving almost all we had 
with the tent and boat. Each took his own blanket; 
and among us we carried a frying-pan, a teapot, flour, 
pork, salt, tea, and matches. I also took a jacket, a 
spare pair of socks, some handkerchiefs, and my wash- 
ing kit. Fifty cartridges in my belt completed my 
outfit. 

We walked in single file, as is necessary in thick 
woods. The white hunter led and I followed, each with 
rifle on shoulder and pack on back. Ammal, the In- 
dian, pigeon-toed along behind, carrying his pack, not 
as we did ours, but by help of a forehead band, which 
he sometimes shifted across his breast. The travelling 
through the tangled, brush-choked forest, and along 
the boulder-strewn and precipitous mountainsides, 
was inconceivably rough and difficult. In places we 
followed the valley, and when this became impossible 
we struck across the spurs. Every step was severe toil. 
Now we walked through deep moss and rotting mould, 
every few feet clambering over huge trunks; again we 

122 



HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS 

pushed through a stiff jungle of bushes and tall, prickly 
plants — called "devil's clubs" — which stung our hands 
and faces. Up the almost perpendicular hillsides we 
in many places went practically on all fours, forcing 
our w^ay over the rocks and through the dense thickets 
of laurels or young spruce. Where there were windfalls 
or great stretches of burned forest, black and barren 
wastes, we balanced and leaped from log to log, some- 
times twenty or thirty feet above the ground ; and when 
such a stretch was on a steep hillside, and especially 
if the logs were enveloped in a thick second growth 
of small evergreens, the footing was very insecure and 
the danger from a fall considerable. Our packs added 
greatly to our labor, catching on the snags and stubs; 
and where a grove of thick-growing young spruces or 
balsams had been burned, the stiff and brittle twigs 
pricked like so much coral. Most difficult of all were 
the dry watercourses, choked with alders, where the 
intertwined tangle of tough stems formed an almost 
literally impenetrable barrier to our progress. Nearly 
every movement — leaping, climbing, swinging oneself 
up with one's hands, bursting through stiff bushes, 
plunging into and out of bogs — was one of strain and 
exertion; the fatigue was tremendous, and steadily 
continued, so that in an hour every particle of clothing 
I had on was wringing wet with sweat. 

At noon we halted beside a little brook for a bite of 
lunch — a chunk of cold frying-pan bread, which was 
all we had. 

While at lunch I made a capture. I was sitting on 
a great stone by the edge of the brook, idly gazing 
at a water-WTen which had come up from a short flight 
— I can call it nothing else — underneath the water, 
and was singing sweetly from a spray-splashed log. 

123 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

Suddenly a small animal swam across the little pool at 
my feet. It was less in size than a mouse, and as it 
paddled rapidly underneath the water its body seemed 
flattened like a disk and was spangled with tiny bubbles, 
like specks of silver. It was a water-shrew, a rare little 
beast. I sat motionless and watched both the shrew 
and the water-wren — water-ousel, as it should rightly 
be named. The latter, emboldened by my quiet, pres- 
ently flew by me to a little rapids close at hand, lighting 
on a round stone and then slipping unconcernedly into 
the swift water. Anon he emerged, stood on another 
stone, and trilled a few bars, though it was late in the 
season for singing, and then dived again into the stream. 

I gazed at him eagerly; for this strange, pretty water- 
thrush is to me one of the most attractive and interesting 
birds to be found in the gorges of the great Rockies. 
Its haunts are romantically beautiful, for it always 
dwells beside and in the swift-flowing mountain brooks ; 
it has a singularly sweet song; and its ways render it a 
marked bird at once, for, though looking much like a 
sober-colored, ordinary woodland thrush, it spends half 
its time under the water, walking along the bottom, 
swimming and diving, and flitting through as well as 
over the cataracts. 

In a minute or two the shrew caught my eye again. 
It got into a little shallow eddy and caught a minute 
fish, which it carried to a half-sunken stone and greedily 
devoured, tugging voraciously at it as it held it down 
with its paws. Then its evil genius drove it into a 
small puddle alongside the brook, where I instantly 
pounced on and slew it; for I knew a friend in the 
Smithsonian at Washington who would have coveted 
it greatly. It was a soft, pretty creature, dark above, 
snow-white below, with a very long tail. I turned the 

124 



HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS 

skin inside out and put a bent twig in, that it might 
dry; while Ammal, who had been intensely interested 
in the chase and capture, meditatively shook his head 
and said *'wagh," unable to fathom the white man's 
medicine. However, my labor came to naught, for that 
evening I laid the skin out on a log, Ammal threw the 
log into the fire, and that was the end of the shrew. 

When this interlude was over we resumed our march, 
toiling silently onward through the wild and rugged 
country. Toward evening the valley widened a little, 
and we were able to walk in the bottoms, which much 
lightened our labor. The hunter, for greater ease, had 
tied the thongs of his heavy pack across his breast, so 
that he could not use his rifle; but my pack was lighter, 
and I carried it in a manner that would not interfere 
with my shooting, lest we should come unawares on 
game. 

It was well that I did so. An hour or two before sun- 
set we were travelling, as usual, in Indian file, beside 
the stream, through an open wood of great hemlock- 
trees. There was no breeze, and we made no sound as 
we marched, for our feet sank noiselessly into the deep 
sponge of moss, while the incessant dashing of the tor- 
rent, churning among the stones, would have drowned 
a far louder advance. 

Suddenly the hunter, who was leading, dropped down 
in his tracks, pointing forward; and some fifty feet 
beyond I saw the head and shoulders of a bear as he 
rose to make a sweep at some berries. He was in a 
hollow where a tall, rank, prickly plant, with broad 
leaves, grew luxuriantly; and he was gathering its red 
berries, rising on his hind legs and sweeping them down 
into his mouth with his paw, and was much too intent 
on his work to notice us, for his head was pointed the 

125 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

other way. The moment he rose again I fired, meaning 
to shoot through the shoulders, but instead, in the 
hurry, taking him in the neck. Down he went, but 
whether hurt or not we could not see, for the second 
he was on all fours he was no longer visible. Rather 
to my surprise he uttered no sound — for bear when hit 
or when charging often make a great noise — so I raced 
forward to the edge of the hollow, the hunter close 
behind me, while Ammal danced about in the rear, 
very much excited, as Indians always are in the presence 
of big game. The instant we reached the hollow and 
looked down into it from the low bank on which we 
stood we saw by the swaying of the tall plants that 
the bear was coming our way. The hunter was standing 
some ten feet distant, a hemlock trunk being between 
us ; and the next moment the bear sprang clean up the 
bank the other side of the hemlock, and almost within 
arm's length of my companion. I do not think he had 
intended to charge; he was probably confused by the 
bullet through his neck, and had by chance blundered 
out of the hollow in our direction; but when he saw 
the hunter so close he turned for him, his hair bristling 
and his teeth showing. The man had no cartridge in 
his weapon, and with his pack on could not have used 
it anyhow; and for a moment it looked as if he stood a 
fair chance of being hurt, though it is not likely that 
the bear would have done more than knock him down 
with his powerful fore paw or perchance give him a 
single bite in passing. However, as the beast sprang 
out of the hollow he poised for a second on the edge of 
the bank to recover his balance, giving me a beautiful 
shot, as he stood sidewise to me; the bullet struck 
between the eye and ear, and he fell as if hit with a 
poleaxe. 

126 



HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS 

Immediately the Indian began jumping about the 
body, uttering wild yells, his usually impassive face 
lighted up with excitement, while the hunter and I 
stood at rest, leaning on our rifles and laughing. It 
was a strange scene, the dead bear lying in the shade 
of the giant hemlocks, while the fantastic-looking savage 
danced round him with shrill whoops, and the tall 
frontiersman looked quietly on. 

Our prize was a large black bear, with two curious 
brown streaks down his back, one on each side the spine. 
We skinned him and camped by the carcass, as it was 
growing late. To take the chill off the evening air we 
built a huge fire, the logs roaring and crackling. To 
one side of it we made our beds — of balsam and hem- 
lock boughs; we did not build a brush lean-to, because 
the night seemed likely to be clear. Then we supped 
on sugarless tea, frying-pan bread, and quantities of 
bear meat, fried or roasted — and how very good it 
tasted only those know who have gone through much 
hardship and some little hunger, and have worked 
violently for several days without flesh food. After 
eating our fill we stretched ourselves around the fire; 
the leaping sheets of flame lighted the tree-trunks round 
about, causing them to start out against the cavernous 
blackness beyond, and reddened the interlacing branches 
that formed a canopy overhead. The Indian sat on 
his haunches, gazing steadily and silently into the pile 
of blazing logs, while the white hunter and I talked 
together. 

The morning after killing Bruin, we again took up 
our march, heading upstream, that we might go to 
its sources amid the mountains, where the snow-fields 
fed its springs. It was two full days' journey thither, 
but we took much longer to make it, as we kept halting 

127 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

to hunt the adjoining mountains. On such occasions 
Ammal was left as camp guard, while the white hunter 
and I would start by daybreak and return at dark, 
utterly worn out by the excessive fatigue. We knew 
nothing of caribou, nor where to hunt for them; and we 
had been told that thus early in the season they were 
above tree limit on the mountainsides. Accordingly 
we would climb up to the limits of the forests, but never 
found a caribou trail; and once or twice we went on 
to the summits of the crag peaks and across the deep 
snow-fields in the passes. There were plenty of white 
goats, however, their trails being broad paths, especially 
at one spot where they led down to a lick in the valley; 
round the lick for a space of many yards the ground was 
trampled as if in a sheepfold. 

The mountains were very steep, and the climbing was 
in places dangerous, when we were above the timber and 
had to make our way along the jagged knife crests and 
across the faces of the cliffs; while our hearts beat as 
if about to burst in the high, thin air. In walking over 
rough but not dangerous ground — across slides or in 
thick timber — my companion was far more skilful than 
I was; but rather to my surprise I proved to be nearly 
as good as he when we came to the really dangerous 
places, where we had to go slowly, and let one another 
down from ledge to ledge, or crawl by narrow cracks 
across the rock walls. 

The view from the summits was magnificent, and 
I never tired of gazing at it. Sometimes the sky was 
a dome of blue crystal, and mountain, lake, and valley 
lay spread in startling clearness at our very feet; and 
again snow peak and rock peak were thrust up like 
islands through a sea of billowy clouds. At the feet of 
the topmost peaks, just above the edge of the forest, 

128 



HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS 

were marshy Alpine valleys, the boggy ground soaked 
with water, and small bushes or stunted trees fringing 
the icy lakes. In the stony mountainsides surrounding 
these lakes there were hoary woodchucks and conies. 
The former resembled in their habits the Alpine mar- 
mot, rather than our own common Eastern woodchuck. 
They lived alone or in couples among the rocks, their 
gray color often making them difficult to see as they 
crouched at the mouths of their burrows or sat bolt 
upright; and as an alarm note they uttered a loud 
piercing whistle, a strong contrast to the querulous, 
plaintive "p-a-a-y" of the timid conies. These like- 
wise loved to dwell where the stones and slabs of rock 
were heaped on one another; though so timid, they 
were not nearly as wary as the woodchucks. If we stood 
quite still the little brown creatures would venture away 
from their holes and hop softly over the rocks as if we 
were not present. 

The white goats were too musky to eat, and we saw 
nothing else to shoot; so we speedily became reduced 
to tea, and to bread baked in the frying-pan, save every 
now and then for a feast on the luscious mountain blue- 
berries. This rather meagre diet, coupled with incessant 
fatigue and exertion, made us fairly long for meat food; 
and we fell off in flesh, though of course in so short a 
time we did not suffer in either health or strength. 
Fortunately the nights were too cool for mosquitoes; 
but once or twice in the afternoons, while descending 
the lower slopes of the mountains, we were much both- 
ered by swarms of gnats; they worried us greatly, 
usually attacking us at a time when we had to go fast 
in order to reach camp before dark, while the roughness 
of the ground forced us to use both hands in climbing, 
and thus forbade us to shield our faces from our tiny 

129 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

tormentors. Our chief luxury was, at the end of the 
day, when footsore and weary, to cast aside our sweat- 
drenched clothes and plunge into the icy mountain 
torrent for a moment's bath that freshened us as if by 
magic. The nights were generally pleasant, and we 
slept soundly on our beds of balsam boughs, but once 
or twice there were sharp frosts, and it was so cold that 
the hunter and I huddled together for warmth and kept 
the fires going till morning. One day, when we were 
on the march, it rained heavily, and we were soaked 
through, and stiff and chilly, when we pitched camp; 
but we speedily built a great brush lean-to, made a 
roaring fire in front, and grew once more to warmth 
and comfort as we sat under our steaming shelter. 
The only discomfort we really minded was an occasional 
night in wet blankets. 

In the evening the Indian and the white hunter played 
interminable games of seven-up with a greasy pack of 
cards. In the course of his varied life the hunter had 
been a professional gambler; and he could have easily 
won all the Indian's money, the more speedily inasmuch 
as the untutored red man was always attempting to 
cheat, and was thus giving his far more skilful opponent 
a certain right to try some similar deviltry in return. 
However, it was distinctly understood that there should 
be no gambling, for I did not wish Ammal to lose all 
his wages while in my employ; and the white man 
stood loyally by his agreement. Ammal's people, just 
before I engaged him, had been visited by their breth- 
ren, the Upper Kootenais, and in a series of gambling 
matches had lost about all their belongings. 

Ammal, himself, was one of the Lower Kootenais; 
I had hired him for the trip, as the Indians west of the 
Rockies, unlike their kinsmen of the plains, often prove 

130 



HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS 

hard and willing workers. His knowledge of English 
was almost nil; and our very scanty conversation was 
carried on in the Chinook jargon, universally employed 
between the mountains and the Pacific. Apparently 
he had three names, for he assured us that his "Boston" 
(i. e., American) name was Ammal ; his "Siwash" (i. e.y 
Indian) name was Appak; and that the priest called 
him Abel — for the Lower Kootenais are nominally Cath- 
olics. Whatever his name, he was a good Indian as 
Indians go. I often tried to talk with him about game 
and hunting, but we understood each other too little 
to exchange more than the most rudimentary ideas. 
His face brightened one night when I happened to tell 
him of my baby boys at home; he must have been an 
affectionate father in his way, this dark Ammal, for he 
at once proceeded to tell me about his own pappoose, 
who had also seen one snow, and to describe how the 
little fellow was old enough to take one step and then 
fall down. But he never displayed so much vivacity 
as on one occasion when the white hunter happened to 
relate to him a rather gruesome feat of one of their 
mutual acquaintances, an Upper Kootenai Indian 
named Three Coyotes. The latter was a quarrelsome, 
adventurous Indian, with whom the hunter had once 
had a difficulty — "I had to beat the cuss over the head 
with my gun a little," he remarked parenthetically. 
His last feat had been done in connection with a number 
of Chinamen who had been working among some placer- 
mines, where the Indians came to visit them. Now, 
the astute Chinese are as fond of gambling as any of 
the borderers, white or red, and are very successful, 
generally fleecing the Indians unmercifully. Three 
Coyotes lost all he possessed to one of the pigtailed 
gentry; but he apparently took his losses philosoph- 

131 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

ically, and pleasantly followed the victor round, until 
the latter had won all the cash and goods of several 
other Indians. Then he suddenly fell on the exile from 
the Celestial Empire, slew him, and took all his plunder, 
retiring unmolested, as it did not seem any one's business 
to avenge a mere Chinaman. Ammal was immensely 
interested in the tale, and kept recurring to it again and 
again, taking two little sticks and making the hunter 
act out the whole story. The Kootenais were then only 
just beginning to consider the Chinese as human. They 
knew they must not kill white people, and they had 
their own code of morality among themselves; but 
when the Chinese first appeared they evidently thought 
that there could not be any special objection to kill- 
ing them, if any reason arose for doing so. I think 
the hunter himself sympathized somewhat with this 
view. 

Ammal objected strongly to leaving the neighborhood 
of the lake. He went the first day's journey willingly 
enough, but after that it was increasingly difficult to 
get him along, and he gradually grew sulky. For some 
time we could not find out the reason; but finally he 
gave us to understand that he was afraid because up 
in the high mountains there were "little bad Indians" 
who would kill him if they caught him alone, especially 
at night. At first we thought he was speaking of stray 
warriors of the Blackfeet tribe; but it turned out that 
he was not thinking of human beings at all, but of 
hobgoblins. 

Indeed, the night sounds of these great stretches of 
mountain woodlands were very weird and strange. 
Though I have often, and for long periods, dwelt and 
hunted in the wilderness, yet I never before so well 
understood why the people who live in lonely forest 

132 



HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS 

regions are prone to believe in elves, wood spirits, and 
other beings of an unseen world. Our last camp, where- 
at we spent several days, was pitched in a deep valley 
nearly at the head of the stream. Our brush shelter 
stood among the tall coniferous trees that covered the 
valley bottom; but the altitude was so great that the 
forest extended only a very short distance up the steep 
mountain slopes. Beyond, on either hand, rose walls 
of gray rock, with snow beds in their rifts, and, high 
above, toward the snow peaks, the great white fields 
dazzled the eyes. The torrent foamed swiftly by but 
a short distance below the mossy level space on which 
we had built our slight weather-shield of pine boughs; 
other streams poured into it, from ravines through 
which they leaped down the mountainsides. 

After nightfall, round the camp-fire, or if I awakened 
after sleeping a little while, I would often lie silently 
for many minutes together, listening to the noises in 
the wilderness. At times the wind moaned harshly 
through the tops of the tall pines and hemlocks; at 
times the branches were still ; but the splashing murmur 
of the torrent never ceased, and through it came other 
sounds — the clatter of huge rocks falling down the cliffs, 
the dashing of cataracts in far-off ravines, the hooting 
of owls. Again, the breeze would shift, and bring to 
my ears the ringing of other brooks and cataracts and 
wind-stirred forests, and perhaps, at long intervals, the 
cry of some wild beast, the crash of a falling tree, or the 
faint rumble of a snow avalanche. If I listened long 
enough, it would almost seem that I heard thunderous 
voices laughing and calling to one another, and as if at 
any moment some shape might stalk out of the dark- 
ness into the dim light of the embers. 

Until within a couple of days of turning our faces 

133 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

back toward the lake we did not come across any cari- 
bou, and saw but a few old signs; and we began to be 
fearful lest we should have to return without getting 
any, for our shoes had been cut to ribbons by the sharp 
rocks, we were almost out of flour, and therefore had but 
little to eat. However, our perseverance was destined 
to be rewarded. 

The first day after reaching our final camp, we hunted 
across a set of spurs and hollows but saw nothing living; 
yet we came across several bear tracks, and in a deep, 
mossy quagmire, by a spring, found where a huge silver- 
tip had wallowed only the night before. 

Next day we started early, determined to take a long 
walk and follow the main stream up to its head, or at 
least above timber-line. The hunter struck so brisk a 
pace, plunging through thickets and leaping from log 
to log in the slashes of fallen timber, and from boulder 
to boulder in crossing the rock slides, that I could 
hardly keep up to him, struggle as I would, and we each 
of us got several ugly tumbles, saving our rifles at the 
expense of scraped hands and bruised bodies. We went 
up one side of the stream, intending to come down the 
other; for the forest belt was narrow enough to hunt 
thoroughly. For two or three hours we toiled through 
dense growth, varied by rock slides, and once or twice 
by marshy tracts, where water oozed and soaked 
through the mossy hillsides, studded rather sparsely 
with evergreens. In one of these places we caught a 
glimpse of an animal which the track showed to be a 
wolverene. 

Then we came to a spur of open hemlock forest; and 
no sooner had we entered it than the hunter stopped and 
pointed exultingly to a well-marked game trail, in which 
it was easy at a glance to discern the great round foot- 

134 



,HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS 

prints of our quarry. We hunted carefully over the spur 
and found several trails, generally leading down along 
the ridge; we also found a number of beds, some old 
and some recent, usually placed where the animal could 
keep a lookout for any foe coming up from the valley. 
They were merely slight hollows or indentations in the 
pine-needles; and, like the game trails, were placed in 
localities similar to those that would be chosen by black- 
tail deer. The caribou droppings were also very plenti- 
ful; and there were signs of where they had browsed on 
the blueberry bushes, cropping off the berries, and also 
apparently of where they had here and there plucked a 
mouthful of a peculiar kind of moss, or cropped off some 
little mushrooms. But the beasts themselves had evi- 
dently left the hemlock ridge, and we went on. 

We were much pleased at finding the sign in open 
timber, where the ground was excellent for still-hunting; 
for in such thick forest as we had passed through, it 
would have been by mere luck only that we could have 
approached game. 

After a little while the valley became so high that 
the large timber ceased, and there were only occasional 
groves of spindling evergreens. Beyond the edge of the 
big timber was a large boggy tract, studded with little 
pools; and here again we found plenty of caribou tracks. 
A caribou has an enormous foot, bigger than a cow's, 
and admirably adapted for travelling over snow or bogs ; 
hence they can pass through places where the long, 
slender hoofs of moose or deer, or the round hoofs of 
elk, would let their owners sink at once; and they are 
very difficult to kill by following on snow-shoes — a 
method much in vogue among the brutal game-butchers 
for slaughtering the more helpless animals. Spreading 
out his great hoofs, and bending his legs till he walks 

135 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

almost on the joints, a caribou will travel swiftly over 
a crust through which a moose breaks at every stride, 
or through deep snow in which a deer cannot flounder 
fifty yards. Usually he trots; but when pressed he will 
spring awkwardly along, leaving tracks in the snow 
almost exactly like magnified imprints of those of a 
great rabbit, the long marks of the two hind legs forming 
an angle with each other, while the forefeet make a 
large point almost between. 

The caribou had wandered all over the bogs and 
through the shallow pools, but evidently only at night 
or in the dusk, when feeding or in coming to drink; and 
again we went on. Soon the timber disappeared almost 
entirely, and thick brushwood took its place; we were 
in a high, bare Alpine valley, the snow lying in drifts 
along the sides. In places there had been enormous 
rock slides, entirely filling up the bottom, so that for a 
quarter of a mile at a stretch the stream ran under- 
ground. In the rock masses of this Alpine valley we, 
as usual, saw many conies and hoary woodchucks. 

The caribou trails had ceased, and it was evident 
that the beasts were not ahead of us in the barren, 
treeless recesses between the mountains of rock and 
snow; and we turned back down the valley, crossing 
over to the opposite or south side of the stream. We 
had already eaten our scanty lunch, for it was afternoon. 
For several miles of hard walking, through thicket, 
marsh, and rock slide, we saw no traces of the game. 
Then we reached the forest, which soon widened out, 
and crept up the mountainsides ; and we came to where 
another stream entered the one we were following. A 
high, steep shoulder between the two valleys was cov- 
ered with an open growth of great hemlock timber, and 
in this we again found the trails and beds plentiful. 

136 



HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS 

There was no breeze, and after beating through the 
forest nearly to its upper edge, we began to go down 
the ridge, or point of the shoulder. The comparative 
freedom from brushwood made it easy to walk without 
noise, and we descended the steep incline with the ut- 
most care, scanning every object, and using every cau- 
tion not to slip on the hemlock-needles, nor to strike a 
stone or break a stick with our feet. The sign was very 
fresh, and when still half a mile or so from the bottom 
we at last came on three bull caribou. 

Instantly the hunter crouched down, while I ran 
noiselessly forward behind the shelter of a big hemlock 
trunk until within fifty yards of the grazing and un- 
conscious quarry. They were feeding with their heads 
uphill, but so greedily that they had not seen us; and 
they were rather difficult to see themselves, for their 
bodies harmonized well in color with the brown tree- 
trunks and lichen-covered boulders. The largest, a big 
bull with a good but by no means extraordinary head, 
was nearest. As he stood fronting me with his head 
down I fired into his neck, breaking the bone, and he 
turned a tremendous back somersault. The other two 
halted a second in stunned terror; then one, a yearling, 
rushed past us up the valley down which we had come, 
while the other, a large bull with small antlers, crossed 
right in front of me, at a canter, his neck thrust out, 
and his head — so coarse-looking compared to the deli- 
cate outlines of an elk's — turned toward me. His 
movements seemed clumsy and awkward, utterly un- 
like those of a deer; but he handled his great hoofs 
cleverly enough, and broke into a headlong, rattling 
gallop as he went down the hillside, crashing through 
the saplings and leaping over the fallen logs. There 
was a spur a little beyond, and up this he went at a 

137 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

swinging trot, halting when he reached the top, and 
turning to look at me once more. He was only a hun- 
dred yards away; and though I had not intended to 
shoot him (for his head was not good), the temptation 
was sore; and I was glad when, in another second, the 
stupid beast turned again and went off up the valley at 
a slashing run. 

Then we hurried down to examine with pride and 
pleasure the dead bull — his massive form, sleek coat, 
and fine antlers. It was one of those moments that 
repay the hunter for days of toil and hardship; that 
is, if he needs repayment and does not find life in the 
wilderness pleasure enough in itself. 

It was getting late, and if we expected to reach camp 
that night it behooved us not to delay; so we merely 
halted long enough to dress the caribou, and take a 
steak with us — which we did not need, by the way, for 
almost immediately we came on a band of spruce-grouse 
and knocked off the heads of five with our rifles. The 
caribou's stomach was filled with blueberries, and with 
their leaves, and with a few small mushrooms also, and 
some mouthfuls of moss. We went home very fast, 
too much elated to heed scratches and tumbles; and 
just as it was growing so dark that further travelling 
was impossible we came opposite our camp, crossed the 
river on a fallen hemlock, and walked up to the moody 
Indian as he sat crouched by the fire. 

He lost his suUenness when he heard what we had 
done; and next day we all went up and skinned and 
butchered the caribou, returning to camp and making 
ready to start back to the lake the following morning; 
and that night we feasted royally. 

We were off by dawn, the Indian joyfully leading. 
Coming up into the mountains he had always been the 

138 



HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS 

rear man of the file ; but now he went first and struck 
a pace that, continued all day long, gave me a little 
trouble to follow. Each of us carried his pack; to the 
Indian's share fell the caribou skull and antlers, which 
he bore on his head. At the end of the day he confessed 
to me that it had made his head "heap sick" — as well 
it might. We had made four short days', or parts of 
days', march coming up; for we had stopped to hunt, 
and moreover we knew nothing of the country, being 
probably the first white men in it, while none of the 
Indians had ever ventured a long distance from the 
lake. Returning we knew how to take the shortest 
route, we were going downhill, and we walked or trotted 
very fast; and so we made the whole distance in twelve 
hours' travel. At sunset we came out on the last range 
of steep foot-hills, overlooking the cove where we had 
pitched our permanent camp; and from a bare cliff 
shoulder we saw our boat on the beach, and our white 
tent among the trees, just as we had left them, while 
the glassy mirror of the lake reflected the outlines of 
the mountains opposite. 

Though this was the first caribou I had ever killed, 
it was by no means the first I had ever hunted. Among 
my earliest hunting experiences, when a lad, were two 
fruitless and toilsome expeditions after caribou in the 
Maine woods. One I made in the fall, going to the head 
of the Munsungin River in a pirogue, with one com- 
panion. The water was low, and all the way up w^e 
had to drag the pirogue, wet to our middles, our ankles 
sore from slipping on the round stones under the rushing 
water, and our muscles aching with fatigue. When we 
reached the headwaters we found no caribou sign, and 
came back without slaying anything larger than an 
infrequent duck or grouse. 

139 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

The following February I made a trip on snow-shoes 
after the same game, and with the same result. How- 
ever, I enjoyed the trip, for the northland woods are 
very beautiful and strange in winter, as indeed they 
are at all other times — and it was my first experience 
on snow-shoes. I used the ordinary webbed rackets, 
and as the snow, though very deep, was only imper- 
fectly crusted, I found that for a beginner the exercise 
was laborious in the extreme, speedily discovering that, 
no matter how cold it was, while walking through the 
windless woods I stood in no need of warm clothing. 
But at night, especially when lying out, the cold was 
bitter. Our plan was to drive in a sleigh to some log- 
ging-camp, where we were always received with hearty 
hospitality, and thence make hunting trips, in very 
light marching order, through the heart of the surround- 
ing forest. The woods, wrapped in their heavy white 
mantle, were still and lifeless. There were a few chick- 
adees and woodpeckers; now and then we saw flocks 
of redpolls, pine-linnets, and large, rosy grosbeaks; 
and once or twice I came across a grouse or white 
rabbit, and killed it for supper; but this was nearly all. 
Yet, though bird life was scarce, and though we saw 
few beasts beyond an occasional porcupine or squirrel, 
every morning the snow was dotted with a network of 
trails made during the hours of darkness; the fine 
tracery of the footprints of the little red wood-mouse, 
the marks which showed the loping progress of the sable, 
the V and dot of the rabbit, the round pads of the 
lucivee, and many others. The snow reveals, as nothing 
else does, the presence in the forest of the many shy 
woodland creatures which lead their lives abroad only 
after nightfall. Once we saw a coon, out early after 
its winter nap, and following I shot it in a hollow tree. 

140 



HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS 

Another time we came on a deer and the frightened 
beast left its "yard," a tangle of beaten paths or deep 
furrows. The poor animal made but slow headway 
through the powdery snow; after going thirty or forty 
rods it sank exhausted in a deep drift, and lay there in 
helpless panic as we walked close by. Very different 
were the actions of the only caribou we saw — a fine 
beast which had shed its antlers. I merely caught a 
glimpse of it as it leaped over a breastwork of down 
timbers; and we never saw it again. Alternately trot- 
ting and making a succession of long jumps, it speedily 
left us far behind; with its great splay-hoofs it could 
snow-shoe better than we could. It is among deer the 
true denizen of the regions of heavy snowfall; far more 
so than the moose. Only under exceptional conditions 
of crust-formation is it in any danger from a man on 
snow-shoes. 

In other w ays it is no better able to take care of itself 
than moose and deer; in fact I doubt whether its senses 
are quite as acute, or at least whether it is as wary and 
knowing, for under like conditions it is rather easier to 
still-hunt. In the fall caribou wander long distances, 
and are fond of frequenting the wet barrens which 
break the expanse of the northern forest in tracts of 
ever-increasing size as the subarctic regions are neared. 
At this time they go in bands, each under the control 
of a master-bull, which wages repeated and furious 
battles for his harem; and in their ways of life they 
resemble the wapiti more than they do the moose or 
deer. They sometimes display a curious boldness, the 
bulls especially showing both stupidity and pugnacity 
when in districts to which men rarely penetrate. 

On our way out of the woods, after this hunt, there 
was a slight warm spell, followed by rain and then by 

141 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

freezing weather, so as to bring about what is known 
as a silver thaw. Every twig was sheathed in ghtter- 
ing ice, and in the moonhght the forest gleamed as if 
carved out of frosted silver. 



142 



IX 

THE WAPITI OR ROUND-HORNED ELK 

Once, while on another hunt with John WiUis, I 
spent a week in a vain effort to kill moose among the 
outlying mountains at the southern end of the Bitter 
Root range. Then, as we had no meat, we determined 
to try for elk, of which we had seen much sign. 

We were camped with a wagon, as high among the 
foot-hills as wheels could go, but several hours' walk 
from the range of the game; for it was still early in the 
season, and they had not yet come down from the upper 
slopes. Accordingly we made a practice of leaving the 
wagon for two or three days at a time to hunt; returning 
to get a night's rest in the tent, preparatory to a fresh 
start. On these trips we carried neither blankets nor 
packs, as the walking was difficult and we had much 
ground to cover. Each merely put on his jacket with 
a loaf of frying-pan bread and a paper of salt stuffed 
into the pockets. We were cumbered with nothing 
save our rifles and cartridges. 

On the morning in question we left camp at sunrise. 
For two or three hours we walked uphill through a 
rather open growth of small pines and spruces, the 
travelling being easy. Then we came to the edge of 
a deep valley, a couple of miles across. Into these we 
scrambled, down a steep slide, where the forests had 
grown up among the immense boulder masses. The 
going here was difficult to a degree; the great rocks, 
dead timber, slippery pine-needles, and loose gravel 
entailing caution at every step, while we had to guard 
our rifles carefully from the consequences of a slip. 

143 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

It was not much better at the bottom, which was 
covered by a tangled mass of swampy forest. Through 
this we hunted carefully, but with no success, in spite 
of our toil; for the only tracks we saw that were at all 
fresh were those of a cow and calf moose. Finally, in 
the afternoon, we left the valley and began to climb a 
steep gorge, down which a mountain torrent roared and 
foamed in a succession of cataracts. 

Three hours' hard climbing brought us to another 
valley, but of an entirely different character. It was 
several miles long, but less than a mile broad. Save 
at the mouth, it was walled in completely by chains of 
high rock peaks, their summits snow-capped; the forest 
extended a short distance up their sides. The bottom 
of the valley was in places covered by open woodland, 
elsewhere by marshy meadows, dotted with dense 
groves of spruce. 

Hardly had we entered this valley before we caught 
a glimpse of a yearling elk walking rapidly along a 
game path some distance ahead. We followed as 
quickly as we could without making a noise, but after 
the first glimpse never saw it again; for it is astonishing 
how fast an elk travels, with its ground-covering walk. 
We went up the valley until we were well past its 
middle, and saw abundance of fresh elk signs. Evi- 
dently two or three bands had made the neighborhood 
their headquarters. Among them were some large bulls, 
which had been trying their horns not only on the 
quaking-asp and willow saplings, but also on one an- 
other, though the rut had barely begun. By one pool 
they had scooped out a kind of a wallow or bare spot in 
the grass, and had torn and tramped the ground with 
their hoofs. The place smelt strongly of their urine. 

By the time the sun set we were sure the elk were 

144 



THE WAPITI OR ROUND-HORNED ELK 

toward the head of the valley. We utilized the short 
twilight in arranging our sleeping-place for the night, 
choosing a thick grove of spruce beside a small moun- 
tain tarn, at the foot of a great cliff. We were chiefly 
influenced in our choice by the abundance of dead 
timber of a size easy to handle ; the fuel question being 
all-important on such a trip, where one has to lie out 
without bedding, and to keep up a fire with no axe to 
cut wood. 

Having selected a smooth spot, where some low- 
growing firs made a windbreak, we dragged up enough 
logs to feed the fire throughout the night. Then we 
drank our fill at the icy pool, and ate a few mouthfuls 
of bread. \Miile it was still light we heard the querulous 
bleat of the conies, from among the slide rocks at the 
foot of the mountain; and the chipmunks and chicka- 
rees scolded at us. As dark came on, and we sat silently 
gazing into the flickering blaze, the owls began mut- 
tering and hooting. 

Clearing the ground of stones and sticks, we lay 
down beside the fire, pulled our soft felt hats over our 
ears, buttoned our jackets, and went to sleep. Of 
course our slumbers were fitful and broken, for every 
hour or two the fire got low and had to be replenished. 
We wakened shivering out of each spell of restless 
sleep to find the logs smouldering; we were alternately 
scorched and frozen. 

As the first faint streak of dawn appeared in the 
dark sky my companion touched me lightly on the 
arm. The fire was nearly out; we felt numbed by the 
chill air. At once we sprang up, stretched our arms, 
shook ourselves, examined our rifles, swallowed a 
mouthful or two of bread, and walked off through the 
gloomy forest. 

145 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

At first we could scarcely see our way, but it grew 
rapidly lighter. The gray mist rose and wavered over 
the pools and wet places; the morning voices of the 
wilderness began to break the deathlike stillness. After 
we had walked a couple of miles the mountain tops 
on our right hand reddened in the sun-rays. 

Then, as we trod noiselessly over the dense moss, 
and on the pine-needles under the scattered trees, we 
heard a sharp clang and clatter up the valley ahead of 
us. We knew this meant game of some sort; and 
stealing lightly and cautiously forward we soon saw 
before us the cause of the noise. 

In a little glade, a hundred and twenty-five yards 
from us, two bull elk were engaged in deadly combat, 
while two others were looking on. It was a splendid 
sight. The great beasts faced each other with lowered 
horns, the manes that covered their thick necks and the 
hair on their shoulders bristling and erect. Then they 
charged furiously, the crash of the meeting antlers re- 
sounding through the valley. The shock threw them 
both on their haunches; with locked horns and glaring 
eyes they strove against each other, getting their hind 
legs well under them, straining every muscle in their 
huge bodies, and squealing savagely. They were evenly 
matched in weight, strength, and courage; and push 
as they might, neither got the upper hand, first one 
yielding a few inches, then the other, while they swayed 
to and fro in their struggles, smashing the bushes and 
ploughing up the soil. 

Finally they separated and stood some little distance 
apart, under the great pines; their sides heaving, and 
columns of steam rising from their nostrils through the 
frosty air of the brightening morning. Again they 
rushed together with a crash, and each strove mightily 

146 



THE WAPITI OR ROUND-HORNED ELK 

to overthrow the other, or get past his guard; but the 
branching antlers caught every vicious lunge and thrust. 
This set-to was stopped rather curiously. One of the 
onlooking elk was a yearling; the other, though scarcely 
as heavy-bodied as either of the fighters, had a finer 
head. He was evidently much excited by the battle, 
and he now began to walk toward the two combatants, 
nodding his head and uttering a queer, whistling noise. 
They dared not leave their flanks uncovered to his 
assault; and as he approached they promptly separated, 
and walked off side by side a few yards apart. In a 
moment, however, one spun round and jumped at his 
old adversary, seeking to stab him in his unprotected 
flank; but the latter was just as quick, and as before 
caught the rush on his horns. They closed as furiously 
as ever; but the utmost either could do was to inflict 
one or two punches on the neck and shoulders of his foe, 
where the thick hide served as a shield. Again the 
peacemaker approached, nodding his head, whistling, 
and threatening; and again they separated. 

This was repeated once or twice; and I began to be 
afraid lest the breeze, which was very light and puffy, 
should shift and give them my wind. So, resting my 
rifle on my knee I fired twice, putting one bullet behind 
the shoulder of the peacemaker, and the other behind 
the shoulder of one of the combatants. Both were 
deadly shots, but, as so often with wapiti, neither of the 
wounded animals at the moment showed any signs of 
being hit. The yearling ran off unscathed. The other 
three crowded together and trotted behind some spruce 
on the left, while we ran forward for another shot. 
In a moment one fell; whereupon the remaining two 
turned and came back across the glade, trotting to the 
right. As we opened fire they broke into a lumbering 

147 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

gallop, but were both downed before they got out of 
sight in the timber. 

As soon as the three bulls were down we busied 
ourselves taking off their heads and hides, and cutting 
off the best portions of the meat — from the saddles and 
hams — to take back to camp, where we smoked it. But 
first we had breakfast. We kindled a fire beside a little 
spring of clear water and raked out the coals. Then 
we cut two willow twigs as spits, ran on each a number 
of small pieces of elk loin, and roasted them over the 
fire. We had salt; we were very hungry; and I never 
ate anything that tasted better. 

The wapiti is, next to the moose, the most quar- 
relsome and pugnacious of American deer. It cannot 
be said that it is ordinarily a dangerous beast to hunt; 
yet there are instances in which wounded wapiti, in- 
cautiously approached to within striking distance, have 
severely misused their assailants, both with their ant- 
lers and their forefeet. I myself knew one man who 
had been badly mauled in this fashion. When tamed 
the bulls are dangerous to human life in the rutting 
season. In a grapple they are of course infinitely more 
to be dreaded than ordinary deer, because of their 
great strength. 

However, the fiercest wapiti bull, when in a wild 
state, flees the neighborhood of man with the same 
panic terror shown by the cows; and he makes no stand 
against a grizzly, though when his horns are grown he 
has little fear of either wolf or cougar if on his guard 
and attacked fairly. The chief battles of the bulls are 
of course waged with one another. Before the begin- 
ning of the rut they keep by themselves : singly, while 
the sprouting horns are still very young, at which time 
they lie in secluded spots and move about as little as 

148 



THE WAPITI OR ROUND-HORNED ELK 

possible; in large bands, later in the season. At the 
beginning of the fall these bands join with one another 
and with the bands of cows and calves, which have 
likewise been keeping to themselves during the late 
winter, the spring, and the summer. Vast herds are 
thus sometimes formed, containing, in the old days 
when wapiti were plenty, thousands of head. The bulls 
now begin to fight furiously with one another, and the 
great herd becomes split into smaller ones. Each of 
these has one master-bull, who has won his position by 
savage battle, and keeps it by overcoming every rival, 
whether a solitary bull, or the lord of another harem, 
who challenges him. When not fighting or love-making 
he is kept on the run, chasing away the young bulls 
who venture to pay court to the cows. He has hardly 
time to eat or sleep, and soon becomes gaunt and worn 
to a degree. At the close of the rut many of the bulls 
become so emaciated that they retire to some secluded 
spot to recuperate. They are so weak that they readily 
succumb to the elements or to their brute foes; many 
die from sheer exhaustion. 

The battles between the bulls rarely result fatally. 
After a longer or shorter period of charging, pushing, 
and struggling the heavier or more enduring of the two 
begins to shove his weaker antagonist back and round ; 
and the latter then watches his chance and bolts, hotly 
but as a rule harmlessly, pursued for a few hundred 
yards. The massive branching antlers serve as effective 
guards against the most wicked thrusts. While the 
antagonists are head on, the worst that can happen is 
a punch on the shoulder which w ill not break the thick 
hide, though it may bruise the flesh underneath. It 
is only when a beast is caught while turning that there 
is a chance to deliver a possibly deadly stab in the 

149 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

flank, with the brow prongs, the "dog-killers" as they 
are called in bucks. Sometimes, but rarely, fighting 
wapiti get their antlers interlocked and perish miserably; 
my own ranch, the Elkhorn, was named from finding 
on the spot where the ranch-house now stands two 
splendid pairs of elk-antlers thus interlocked. 

Wapiti keep their antlers until the spring, whereas 
deer and moose lose theirs by midwinter. The bull's 
behavior in relation to the cow is merely that of a 
vicious and brutal coward. He bullies her continually, 
and in times of danger his one thought is for sneaking 
off to secure his own safety. For all his noble looks he 
is a very unamiable beast, who behaves with brutal 
ferocity to the weak and shows abject terror of the 
strong. According to his powers, he is guilty of rape, 
robbery, and even murder. I never felt the least com- 
punction at shooting a bull, but I hate to shoot a cow, 
even when forced by necessity. Maternity must always 
appeal to any one. A cow has more courage than a bull. 
She will fight valiantly for her young calf, striking such 
blows with her forefeet that most beasts of prey at once 
slink away from the combat. Cougars and wolves 
commit great ravages among the bands; but they often 
secure their quarry only at the cost of sharp preliminary 
tussles — and in tussles of this kind they do not always 
prove victors or escape scathless. 

During the rut the bulls are very noisy; and their 
notes of amorous challenge are called "whistling" by 
the frontiersmen — very inappropriately. They begin 
to whistle about ten days before they begin to run; 
and they have in addition an odd kind of bark, which 
is only heard occasionally. The whistling is a most 
curious, and to me a most attractive, sound when 
• heard in the great lonely mountains. As with so many 

150 



THE WAPITI OR ROUND-HORNED ELK 

other things, much depends upon the surroundings. 
When Hstened to near by and under unfavorable cir- 
cumstances, the sound resembles a succession of hoarse 
whistling roars, ending with two or three gasping grunts. 

But heard at a little distance, and in its proper place, 
the call of the wapiti is one of the grandest and most 
beautiful sounds in nature. Especially is this the case 
when several rivals are answering one another, on some 
frosty moonlight night in the mountains. The wild 
melody rings from chasm to chasm under the giant pines, 
sustained and modulated, through bar after bar, filled 
with challenge and proud anger. It thrills the soul of 
the listening hunter. 

Once, while in the mountains, I listened to a peculiarly 
grand chorus of this kind. We were travelling with 
pack-ponies at the time, and our tent was pitched in a 
grove of yellow pine, by a brook in the bottom of a 
valley. On either hand rose the mountains, covered 
with spruce forest. It was in September, and the first 
snow had just fallen. 

The day before we had walked long and hard; and 
during the night I slept the heavy sleep of the weary. 
Early in the morning, just as the east began to grow 
gray, I waked; and as I did so, the sounds that smote 
on my ear caused me to sit up and throw off the warm 
blankets. Bull elk were challenging among the moun- 
tains on both sides of the valley, a little way from us, 
their notes echoing like the calling of silver bugles. 
Groping about in the dark, I drew on my trousers, an 
extra pair of thick socks, and my moccasins, donned a 
warm jacket, found my fur cap and gloves, and stole 
out of the tent with my rifle. 

The air was very cold; the stars were beginning to 
pale in the dawn; on the ground the snow glimmered 

151 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

white, and lay in feathery masses on the branches of 
the balsams and young pines. The air rang with the 
challenges of many wapiti ; their incessant calling came 
pealing down through the still, snow-laden woods. First 
one bull challenged; then another answered; then 
another and another. Two herds were approaching 
one another from opposite sides of the valley, a short 
distance above our camp; and the master-bulls were 
roaring defiance as they mustered their harems. 

I walked stealthily up the valley, until I felt that 
I was nearly between the two herds; and then stood 
motionless under a tall pine. The ground was quite 
open at this point, the pines, though large, being scat- 
tered; the little brook ran with a strangled murmur 
between its rows of willows and alders, for the ice along 
its edges nearly skimmed its breadth. The stars paled 
rapidly, the gray dawn brightened, and in the sky over- 
heap faint rose-colored streaks were turning blood-red. 
What little wind there was breathed in my face and 
kept me from discovery. 

I made up my mind, from the sound of the chal- 
lenging, now very near me, that one bull on my right 
was advancing toward a rival on my left, who was an- 
swering every call. Soon the former approached so 
near that I could hear him crack the branches, and 
beat the bushes with his horns; and I slipped quietly 
from tree to tree, so as to meet him when he came out 
into the more open woodland. Day broke, and crimson 
gleams played across the snow-clad mountains beyond. 

At last, just as the sun flamed red above the hilltops, 
I heard the roar of the wapiti's challenge not fifty yards 
away; and I cocked and half raised my rifle, and stood 
motionless. In a moment more, the belt of spruces in 
front of me swayed and opened, and the lordly bull 

152 



THE WAPITI OR ROUND-HORNED ELK 

stepped out. He bore his massive antlers aloft; the 
snow lay thick on his mane; he snuffed the air and 
stamped on the ground as he walked. As I drew a 
bead, the motion caught his eye; and instantly his 
bearing of haughty and warlike self-confidence changed 
to one of alarm. My bullet smote through his shoulder- 
blades, and he plunged wildly forward, and fell full 
length on the blood-stained snow. 

Nothing can be finer than a wapiti bull's carriage 
when excited or alarmed; he then seems the embodi- 
ment of strength and stately grace. But at ordinary 
times his looks are less attractive, as he walks with his 
neck level with his body and his head outstretched, 
his horns lying almost on his shoulders. The favorite 
gait of the wapiti is the trot, which is very fast, and 
which they can keep up for countless miles; when sud- 
denly and greatly alarmed they break into an awkward 
gallop, which is faster, but which speedily tires them. 

I have occasionally killed elk in the neighborhood 
of my ranch on the Little Missouri. They were very 
plentiful along this river until 1881, but the last of the 
big bands were slaughtered or scattered about that 
time. Smaller bunches were found for two or three 
years longer, and to this day scattered individuals, 
singly or in parties of two or three, linger here and there 
in the most remote and inaccessible parts of the broken 
country. In the old times they were often found on 
the open prairie, and were fond of sunning themselves 
on the sand-bars by the river, even at midday, while 
they often fed by daylight (as they do still in remote 
mountain fastnesses). Nowadays the few survivors 
dwell in the timber of the roughest ravines, and only 
venture abroad at dusk or even after nightfall. Thanks 
to their wariness and secluseness, their presence is often 

153 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

not even suspected by the cowboys or others who oc- 
casionally ride through their haunts ; and so the hunters 
only know vaguely of their existence. It thus happens 
that the last individuals of a species may linger in a 
locality for many years after the rest of their kind have 
vanished ; on the Little Missouri to-day every elk (as in 
the Rockies every buffalo) killed is at once set down as 
"the last of its race." For several years in succession 
I myself kept killing one or two such "last survivors." 
A yearling bull which I thus obtained was killed 
while in company with my stanch friend Will Dow, 
on one of the first trips which I took with that prince of 
drivers, old man Tompkins. We were laying in our 
stock of winter meat; and had taken the wagon to go 
to a knot of high and very rugged hills where we knew 
there were deer, and thought there might be elk. Old 
Tompkins drove the wagon with unmoved composure 
up, down, and across frightful-looking hills, and when 
they became wholly impassable, steered the team over 
a cut bank and up a kind of winding ravine or wooded 
washout, until it became too rough and narrow for 
farther progress. There was good grass for the horses 
on a hill off to one side of us ; and stunted cottonwood- 
trees grew between the straight white walls of clay and 
sandstone which hemmed in the washout. We pitched 
our tent by a little trickling spring and kindled a great 
fire, the fitful glare lighting the bare cliffs and the queer, 
sprawling tops of the cottonwoods; and after a dinner 
of fried prairie-chicken went to bed. At dawn we were 
off, and hunted till nearly noon; when Dow, who had 
been walking to one side, beckoned to me and remarked, 
"There's something mighty big in the timber down 
under the cliff; I guess it's an elk" (he never had seen 
one before); and the next moment, as old Tompkins 

154 



THE WAPITI OR ROUND-HORNED ELK 

expressed it, "the elk came bilin' out of the coulee." 
Old Tompkins had a rifle on this occasion and the sight 
of game always drove him crazy; as I aimed I heard 
Dow telling him to '*let the boss do the shooting"; and 
I killed the elk to a savage interjectional accompaniment 
of threats delivered at old man Tompkins between the 
shots. 

Elk are sooner killed off than any other game save 
buffalo, but this is due to their size and the nature of 
the ground they frequent rather than to their lack of 
shyness. They like open woodland, or mountainous 
park country, or hills riven by timber coulees; and 
such ground is the most favorable to the hunter, and 
the most attractive in which to hunt. On the other 
hand, moose, for instance, live in such dense cover that 
it is very difficult to get at them; when elk are driven 
by incessant persecution to take refuge in similar fast- 
nesses they become almost as hard to kill. In fact, in 
this respect the elk stands to the moose much as the 
blacktail stands to the whitetail. The moose and white- 
tail are somewhat warier than the elk and blacktail; 
but it is the nature of the ground which they inhabit 
that tells most in their favor. On the other hand, as 
compared to the blacktail, it is only the elk's size which 
puts it at a disadvantage in the struggle for life when 
the rifle-bearing hunter appears on the scene. It is 
quite as shy and diflScult to approach as the deer; but 
its bulk renders it much more eagerly hunted, more 
readily seen, and more easily hit. Occasionally elk 
suffer from fits of stupid tameness or equally stupid 
panic; but the same is true of blacktail. In two or 
three instances, I have seen elk show silly ignorance of 
danger; but half a dozen times I have known blacktail 
behave with an even greater degree of stupid familiarity. 

155 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

There is another point in which the wapiti and black- 
tail agree in contrast to the moose and whitetail. Both 
the latter delight in water-lilies, entering the ponds to 
find them, and feeding on them greedily. The wapiti 
is very fond of wallowing in the mud, and of bathing 
in pools and lakes ; but as a rule it shows as little fond- 
ness as the blacktail for feeding on water-lilies or other 
aquatic plants. 

In reading of the European red deer, which is nothing 
but a diminutive wapiti, we often see "a stag of ten" 
alluded to as if a full-grown monarch. A full-grown 
wapiti bull, however, always has twelve, and may have 
fourteen, regular normal points on his antlers, besides 
irregular additional prongs; and he occasionally has 
ten points when a two-year-old, as I have myself seen 
with calves captured young and tamed. The calf has 
no horns. The yearling carries two foot-long spikes, 
sometimes bifurcated, so as to make four points. The 
two-year-old often has six or eight points on his antlers; 
but sometimes ten, although they are always small. 
The three-year-old has eight or ten points, while his 
body may be nearly as large as that of a full-grown 
animal. The four-year-old is normally a ten or twelve 
pointer, but as yet with much smaller antlers than those 
so proudly borne by the old bulls. 

Frontiersmen only occasionally distinguish the prongs 
by name. The brow and bay points are called dog- 
killers or war-tines; the tray is known simply as the 
third point; and the most characteristic prong, the long 
and massive fourth, is now and then called the dagger- 
point; the others being known as the fifth and sixth. 

In the high mountain forest into which the wapiti 
has been driven, the large, heavily furred northern lynx, 
the lucivee, takes the place of the smaller, thinner- 

156 



THE WAPITI OR ROUND-HORNED ELK 

haired lynx of the plains, and of the more southern 
districts, the bobcat or wildcat. On the Little Missouri 
the latter is the common form ; yet I have seen a lucivee 
which was killed there. On Clark's Fork of the Co- 
lumbia both occur, the lucivee being the most common. 
They feed chiefly on hares, squirrels, grouse, fawns, 
etc.; and the lucivee, at least, also occasionally kills 
foxes and coons, and has in its turn to dread the pounce 
of the big timber-wolf. Both kinds of lynx can most 
easily be killed with dogs, as they tree quite readily 
when thus pursued. The wildcat is often followed on 
horseback, with a pack of hounds, when the country is 
favorable; and when chased in this fashion yields ex- 
cellent sport. The skin of both these lynxes is tender. 
They often maul an inexperienced pack quite badly, 
inflicting severe scratches and bites on any hound which 
has just resolution enough to come to close quarters, 
but not to rush in furiously; but a big fighting dog will 
readily kill either. At Thompson's Falls two of Willis's 
hounds killed a lucivee unaided, though one got torn. 
Archibald Rogers's dog Sly, a cross between a grey- 
hound and a bull mastiff, killed a bobcat single-handed. 
He bayed the cat and then began to threaten it, leap- 
ing from side to side; suddenly he broke the motion, 
and rushing in got his foe by the small of the back 
and killed it without receiving a scratch. 

The porcupine is sure to attract the notice of any 
one going through the mountains. It is also found in 
the timber belts fringing the streams of the great plains, 
where it lives for a week at a time in a single tree or 
clump of trees, peeling the bark from the limbs. But 
it is the easiest of all animals to exterminate, and is 
now abundant only in deep mountain forests. It is 
very tame and stupid; it goes on the ground but its 

157 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

fastest pace is a clumsy waddle, and on trees but is 
the poorest of tree-climbers — grasping the trunk like a 
small, slow bear. It can neither escape nor hide. It 
trusts to its quills for protection, as the skunk does to 
its odor; but it is far less astute and more helpless than 
the skunk. It is readily made into a very unsuspicious 
and familiar, but uninteresting, pet. I have known it 
come into camp in the daytime, and forage round 
the fire by which I was sitting. Its coat protects it 
against most foes. Bears sometimes eat it when very 
hungry, as they will eat anything; and I think that 
elk occasionally destroy it in sheer wantonness. One 
of its most resolute foes is the fisher, that big sable — 
almost a wolverene — which preys on everything, from 
a coon to a fawn, or even a small fox. 

The noisy, active little chickarees and chipmunks, 
however, are by far the most numerous and lively den- 
izens of these deep forests. They are very abundant 
and very noisy; scolding the travellers exactly as they 
do the bears when the latter dig up the caches of ants. 
The chipmunks soon grow tame and visit camp to pick 
up the crusts. The chickarees often ascend to the 
highest pine-tops, where they cut off the cones, drop- 
ping them to the ground with a noise which often for a 
moment puzzles the still-hunter. 

Two of the most striking and characteristic birds to 
be seen by him who hunts and camps among the pine- 
clad and spruce-clad slopes of the northern Rockies are 
a small crow and a rather large woodpecker. The former 
is called Clark's crow, and the latter Lewis's woodpecker. 
Their names commemorate their discoverers, the ex- 
plorers Lewis and Clark, the first white men who crossed 
the United States to the Pacific, the pioneers of that 
great army of adventurers who since then have roamed 

158 



THE WAPITI OR ROUND-HORNED ELK 

and hunted over the Great Plains and among the Rocky 
Mountains. 

These birds are nearly of a size, being about as large 
as a flicker. The Clark's crow, an ash-colored bird with 
black wings and white tail and forehead, is as common 
as it is characteristic, and is sure to attract attention. 
It is as knowing as the rest of its race, and very noisy 
and active. It flies sometimes in a straight line, with 
regular wing-beats, sometimes in a succession of loops 
like a woodpecker, and often lights on rough bark or a 
dead stump in an attitude like the latter; and it is very 
fond of scrambling and clinging, often head downward, 
among the outermost cones on the top of a pine, chat- 
tering loudly all the while. One of the noticeable 
features of its flight is the hollow, beating sound of the 
wings. It is restless and fond of company, going by 
preference m small parties. These little parties often 
indulge in regular plays, assembling in some tall tree- 
top and sailing round and round it, in noisy pursuit of 
one another, lighting continually among the branches. 

The Lewis's woodpecker, a handsome, dark-green bird, 
with white breast and red belly, is much rarer, quite 
as shy, and generally less noisy and conspicuous. Its 
flight is usually strong and steady, like a jay's, and it 
perches upright among the twigs, or takes short flights 
after passing insects, as often as it scrambles over the 
twigs in the ordinary woodpecker fashion. Like its 
companion, the Clark's crow, it is ordinarily a bird of 
the high tree-tops, and around these it indulges in curi- 
ous aerial games, again like those of the little crow. 
It is fond of going in troops, and such a troop frequently 
choose some tall pine and soar round and above it in 
irregular spirals. 

The remarkable and almost amphibious little water- 

159 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

wren, with its sweet song, its familiarity, and its very 
curious habit of running on the bottom of the stream, 
several feet beneath the surface of the race of rapid 
water, is the most noticeable of the small birds of the 
Rocky Mountains. It sometimes sings loudly while 
floating with half-spread wings on the surface of a little 
pool. Taken as a whole, small birds are far less numer- 
ous and noticeable in the wilderness, especially in the 
deep forests, than in the groves and farm land of the 
settled country. The hunter and trapper are less 
familiar with small-bird music than with the screaming 
of the eagle and the large hawks, the croaking bark of 
the raven, the loon's cry, the crane's guttural clangor, 
and the unearthly yelling and hooting of the big owls. 

No bird is so common around camp, so familiar, so 
amusing on some occasions, and so annoying on others, 
as that drab-colored imp of iniquity, the whiskey-jack 
— also known as the moose-bird and camp-robber. The 
familiarity of these birds is astonishing, and the variety 
of their cries — generally harsh, but rarely musical — 
extraordinary. They snatch scraps of food from the 
entrances of the tents, and from beside the camp-fire; 
and they shred the venison hung in the trees unless 
closely watched. I have seen an irate cook of accurate 
aim knock one off an elk-haunch, with a club seized at 
random; and I have known another to be killed with 
a switch, and yet another to be caught alive in the 
hand. When game is killed they are the first birds to 
come to the carcass. Following them come the big 
jays, of a uniform dark-blue color, who bully them 
and are bullied in turn by the next arrivals, the magpies; 
while when the big ravens come, they keep all the others 
in the background, with the exception of an occasional 
wide-awake magpie. 

160 



THE WAPITI OR ROUND-HORNED ELK 

For a steady diet no meat tastes better or is more 
nourishing than elk venison; moreover, the different 
kinds of grouse give variety to the fare, and deHcious 
trout swarm throughout the haunts of the elk in the 
Rockies. I have never seen them more numerous than 
in the wonderful and beautiful Yellowstone Canyon, 
a couple of miles below where the river pitches over 
the Great Falls, in wind-swayed cataracts of snowy 
foam. At this point it runs like a mill-race, in its 
narrow winding bed, between immense walls of queerly 
carved and colored rock which tower aloft in almost 
perpendicular cliffs. Late one afternoon in the fall of 
'90 Ferguson and I clambered down into the canyon, 
with a couple of rods, and in an hour caught all the 
fish we could carry. It then lacked much less than an 
hour of nightfall, and we had a hard climb to get out 
of the canyon before darkness overtook us; as there 
was not a vestige of a path, and as the climbing was 
exceedingly laborious, and at one or two points not 
entirely without danger, the rocks being practicable in 
very few places, we could hardly have made much 
progress after it became too dark to see. Each of us 
carried the bag of trout in turn, and I personally was 
nearly done out when we reached the top; and then 
had to trot three miles to the horses. 



161 



X 

AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS 

In September, 1891, with my ranch partner, Fer- 
guson, I made an elk-hunt in northwestern Wyoming 
among the Shoshone Mountains, where they join the 
Hoodoo and Absaroka ranges. There is no more beauti- 
ful game country in the United States. It is a park land, 
where glades, meadows, and high mountain pastures 
break the evergreen forest; a forest which is open com- 
pared to the tangled density of the woodland further 
north. It is a high, cold region of many lakes and clear, 
rushing streams. The steep mountains are generally of 
the rounded form so often seen in the ranges of the 
Cordilleras of the United States; but the Hoodoos, or 
Goblins, are carved in fantastic and extraordinary 
shapes; while the Tetons, a group of isolated rock peaks, 
show a striking boldness in their lofty outlines. 

This was one of the pleasantest hunts I ever made. 
As always in the mountains, save where the country is 
so rough and so densely wooded that one must go afoot, 
we had a pack-train; and we took a more complete 
outfit than we had ever before taken on such a hunt, 
and so travelled in much comfort. Usually when in 
the mountains I have merely had one companion, or at 
most a couple, and two or three pack-ponies; each of 
us doing his share of the packing, cooking, fetching 
water, and pitching the small square of canvas which 
served as tent. In itself packing is both an art and a 
mystery, and a skilful professional packer, versed in 
the intricacies of the "diamond hitch," packs with a 
speed which no non-professional can hope to rival, and 

162 



AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS 

fixes the side packs and top packs with such scientific 
nicety, and adjusts the doubles and turns of the lash- 
rope so accurately, that everything stays in place under 
any but the most adverse conditions. Of course, like 
most hunters, I can myself in case of need throw the 
diamond hitch after a fashion, and pack on either the 
off or near side. Indeed, unless a man can pack it is 
not possible to make a really hard hunt in the moun- 
tains, if alone, or with only a single companion. The 
mere fair-weather hunter, who trusts entirely to the 
exertions of others, and does nothing more than ride 
or walk about under favorable circumstances, and shoot 
at what somebody else shows him, is a hunter in name 
only. WTioever would really deserve the title must be 
able at a pinch to shift for himself, to grapple with the 
diflSculties and hardships of wilderness life unaided, and 
not only to hunt, but at times to travel for days, whether 
on foot or on horseback, alone. However, after one 
has passed one's novitiate, it is pleasant to be com- 
fortable when the comfort does not interfere with the 
sport; and although a man sometimes likes to hunt 
alone, yet often it is well to be with some old mountain 
hunter, a master of woodcraft, who is a first-rate hand 
at finding game, creeping upon it, and tracking it when 
wounded. With such a companion one gets much more 
game, and learns many things by observation instead 
of by painful experience. 

On this trip we had with us two hunters, Tazewell 
Woody and Elwood Hofer, a packer who acted as cook, 
and a boy to herd the horses. Of the latter, there were 
twenty; six saddle-animals and fourteen for the packs 
— two or three being spare horses, to be used later in 
carrying the elk-antlers, sheep-horns, and other trophies. 
Like most hunters' pack-animals, they were either half- 

163 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

broken, or else broken down; tough, unkempt, jaded- 
looking beasts of every color — sorrel, buckskin, pinto, 
white, bay, roan. After the day's work was over, they 
were turned loose to shift for themselves; and about 
once a week they strayed, and all hands had to spend 
the better part of the day hunting for them. The worst 
ones for straying, curiously enough, were three broken- 
down old "bear-baits," which went by themselves, as 
is generally the case with the cast-off horses of a herd. 
There were two sleeping tents, another for the provisions 
— in which we ate during bad weather — and a canvas 
teepee, which was put up with lodge-poles, Indian fash- 
ion, like a wigwam. A teepee is more diflBcult to put up 
than an ordinary tent; but it is very convenient when 
there is rain or snow. A small fire kindled in the middle 
keeps it warm, the smoke escaping through the open 
top — that is, when it escapes at all; strings are passed 
from one pole to another, on which to hang wet clothes 
and shoes and the beds are made around the edges. As 
an offset to the warmth and shelter, the smoke often ren- 
ders it impossible even to sit upright. We had a very 
good camp-kit, including plenty of cooking and eating 
utensils; and among our provisions were some canned 
goods and sweetmeats, to give a relish to our meals of 
mea^ and bread. We had fur coats and warm clothes — 
which are chiefly needed at night — and plenty of bed- 
ding, including water-proof canvas sheeting and a 
couple of caribou-hide sleeping-bags, procured from the 
survivors of a party of arctic explorers. Except on 
rainy days, I used my buckskin hunting-shirt or tunic; 
in dry weather I deem it, because of its color, its texture, 
and its durability, the best possible garb for the still- 
hunter, especially in the woods. 

Starting a day's journey south of Heart Lake, we 

164 



AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS 

travelled and hunted on the eastern edge of the great 
basin, wooded and mountainous, wherein rise the head- 
waters of the mighty Snake River. There was not so 
much as a spotted line — that series of blazes made with 
the axe, man's first highway through the hoary forest — 
but this we did not mind, as for most of the distance 
we followed the well-worn elk trails. The train travelled 
in Indian file. At the head, to pick the path, rode tall, 
silent old Woody, a true type of the fast- vanishing race 
of game-hunters and Indian fighters, a man who had 
been one of the California forty-niners, and who ever 
since had lived the restless, reckless life of the wilder- 
ness. Then came Ferguson and myself; then the pack- 
animals, strung out in line; while from the rear rose 
the varied oaths of our three companions, whose miser- 
able duty it was to urge forward the beasts of burden. 

It is heart-breaking work to drive a pack-train 
through thick timber and over mountains, where there 
is either a dim trail or none. The animals have a per- 
verse faculty for choosing the wrong turn at critical 
moments; and they are continually scraping under 
branches and squeezing between tree- trunks, to the 
jeopardy or destruction of their burdens. After having 
been laboriously driven up a very steep incline, at the 
cost of severe exertion both to them and to the men, the 
foolish creatures turn and run down to the bottom, so 
that all the work has to be done over again. Some 
travel too slow; others travel too fast. Yet one can- 
not but admire the toughness of the animals, and the 
surefootedness with which they pick their way along 
the sheer mountainsides, or among boulders and over 
fallen logs. 

As our way was so rough, we found that we had to 
halt at least once every hour to fix the packs. More- 

165 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

over, we at the head of the column were continually 
being appealed to for help by the unfortunates in the 
rear. First it would be "that white-eyed cay use; one 
side of its pack's down!" then we would be notified 
that the saddle-blanket of the "lop-eared Indian buck- 
skin" had slipped back; then a shout, "Look out for 
the pinto !" would be followed by that pleasing beast's 
appearance, bucking and squealing, smashing dead 
timber, and scattering its load to the four winds. It 
was no easy task to get the horses across some of the 
boggy places without miring; or to force them through 
the denser portions of the forest, where there was much 
down timber. Riding with a pack-train, day in and day 
out, becomes both monotonous and irritating, unless 
one is upheld by the hope of a game country ahead, or 
by the delight of exploration of the unknown. Yet 
when buoyed by such a hope, there is pleasure in taking 
a train across so beautiful and wild a country as that 
which lay on the threshold of our hunting-grounds in 
the Shoshones. We went over mountain passes, with 
ranges of scalped peaks on either hand; we skirted the 
edges of lovely lakes, and of streams with boulder- 
strewn beds; we plunged into depths of sombre wood- 
land, broken by wet prairies. It was a picturesque 
sight to see the loaded pack-train stringing across one 
of these high mountain meadows, the motley -colored 
line of ponies winding round the marshy spots through 
the bright-green grass, while beyond rose the dark line 
of frowning forest, with lofty peaks towering in the 
background. Some of the meadows were beautiful 
with many flowers — goldenrod, purple aster, bluebells, 
white immortelles, and here and there masses of blood- 
red Indian pinks. In the park country, on the edges 
of the evergreen forest, were groves of delicate quaking- 

166 



AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS 

aspen, the trees often growing to quite a height; their 
tremulous leaves were already changing to bright green 
and yellow, occasionally with a reddish blush. In the 
Rocky Mountains the aspens are almost the only de- 
ciduous trees, their foliage offering a pleasant relief to 
the eye after the monotony of the unending pine and 
spruce woods, which afford so striking a contrast to 
the hardwood forest east of the Mississippi. 

For two days our journey was uneventful, save that 
we came on the camp of a squaw-man — one Beaver 
Dick, an old mountain hunter, living in a skin teepee, 
where dwelt his comely Indian wife and half-breed 
children. He had quite a herd of horses, many of them 
mares and colts; they had evidently been well treated, 
and came up to us fearlessly. 

The morning of the third day of our journey was 
gray and lowering. Gusts of rain blew in my face as 
I rode at the head of the train. It still lacked an hour 
of noon, as we were plodding up a valley beside a rapid 
brook running through narrow willow flats, the dark 
forest crowding down on either hand from the low foot- 
hills of the mountains. Suddenly the call of a bull elk 
came echoing down through the wet woodland on our 
right, beyond the brook, seemingly less than half a 
mile off; and was answered by a faint, far-off call from 
a rival on the mountain beyond. Instantly halting 
the train. Woody and I slipped off our horses, crossed 
the brook, and started to still-hunt the first bull. 

In this place the forest was composed of the Western 
tamarack; the large, tall trees stood well apart, and 
there was much down timber, but the ground was 
covered with deep wet moss, over which we trod silently. 
The elk was travelling up-wind, but slowly, stopping 
continually to paw the ground and thrash the bushes 

167 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

with his antlers. He was very noisy, challenging every 
minute or two, being doubtless much excited by the 
neighborhood of his rival on the mountain. AVe fol- 
lowed. Woody leading, guided by the incessant calling. 

It was very exciting as we crept toward the great 
bull, and the challenge sounded nearer and nearer. 
WTiile we were still at some distance the pealing notes 
were like those of a bugle, delivered in two bars, first 
rising, then abruptly falling; as we drew nearer they 
took on a harsh squealing sound. Each call made our 
veins thrill; it sounded like the cry of some huge beast 
of prey. At last we heard the roar of the challenge not 
eighty yards off. Stealing forward three or four yards, 
I saw the tips of the horns through a mass of dead 
timber and young growth, and I slipped to one side to 
get a clean shot. 

Seeing us but not making out what we were, and 
full of fierce and insolent excitement, the wapiti bull 
stepped boldly toward us with a stately swinging gait. 
Then he stood motionless, facing us, barely fifty yards 
away, his handsome twelve-tined antlers tossed aloft, 
as he held his head with the lordly grace of his kind. 
I fired into his chest, and as he turned I raced forward 
and shot him in the flank; but the second bullet was 
not needed, for the first wound was mortal, and he fell 
before going fifty yards. 

The dead elk lay among the young evergreens. The 
huge, shapely body was set on legs that were as strong 
as steel rods, and yet slender, clean, and smooth; they 
were in color a beautiful dark brown, contrasting well 
with the yellowish of the body. The neck and throat 
were garnished with a mane of long hair; the symmetry 
of the great horns set off the fine, delicate lines of the 
noble head. He had been wallowing, as elk are fond 

168 



AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS 

of doing, and the dried mud clung in patches to his 
flank; a stab in the haunch showed that he had been 
overcome in battle by some master-bull who had turned 
him out of the herd. 

We cut off the head, and bore it down to the train. 
The horses crowded together, snorting, with their ears 
pricked forward, as they smelt the blood. We also 
took the loins with us, as we were out of meat, though 
bull elk in the rutting season is not very good. The 
rain had changed to a steady downpour when we again 
got under way. Two or three miles farther we pitched 
camp, in a clump of pines on a hillock in the bottom of 
the valley, starting hot fires of pitchy stumps before the 
tents, to dry our wet things. 

Next day opened with fog and cold rain. The 
drenched pack-animals, when driven into camp, stood 
mopingly, with drooping heads and arched backs; they 
groaned and grunted as the loads were placed on their 
backs and the cinches tightened, the packers bracing one 
foot against the pack to get a purchase as they hauled 
in on the lash-rope. A stormy morning is a trial to 
temper; the packs are w^et and heavy, and the cold 
makes the work even more than usually hard on the 
hands. By ten we broke camp. It needs between two 
and three hours to break camp and get such a train 
properly packed; once started, our day's journey was 
six to eight hours, making no halt. We started up a 
steep, pine-clad mountainside, broken by cliffs. My 
hunting-shoes, though comfortable, were old and thin, 
and let the water through like a sieve. On the top of 
the first plateau, where black-spruce groves were strewn 
across the grassy surface, w^e saw a band of elk, cows and 
calves, trotting off through the rain. Then we plunged 
down into a deep valley, and, crossing it, a hard climb 

169 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

took us to the top of a great bare table-land, bleak and 
wind-swept. We passed little Alpine lakes, fringed with 
scattering dwarf evergreens. Snow lay in drifts on the 
north sides of the gullies; a cutting wind blew the icy 
rain in our faces. For two or three hours we travelled 
toward the farther edge of the table-land. In one place 
a spike-bull elk stood half a mile off, in the open; he 
travelled to and fro, watching us. 

As we neared the edge the storm lulled, and pale, 
watery sunshine gleamed through the rifts in the low- 
scudding clouds. At last our horses stood on the brink 
of a bold cliff. Deep down beneath our feet lay the 
wild and lonely valley of Two-Ocean Pass, walled in 
on either hand by rugged mountain chains, their flanks 
scarred and gashed by precipice and chasm. Beyond, 
in a wilderness of jagged and barren peaks, stretched 
the Shoshones. At the middle point of the pass, two 
streams welled down from either side. At first each 
flowed in but one bed, but soon divided into two; each 
of the twin branches then joined the like branch of the 
brook opposite, and swept one to the east and one to 
the west, on their long journey to the two great oceans. 
They ran as rapid brooks, through wet meadows and 
willow flats, the eastern to the Yellowstone, the western 
to the Snake. The dark pine forests swept down from 
the flanks and lower ridges of the mountains to the 
edges of the marshy valley. Above them jutted gray 
rock peaks, snow-drifts lying in the rents that seamed 
their northern faces. Far below us, from a great basin 
at the foot of the cliff, filled with the pine forest, rose 
the musical challenge of a bull elk; and we saw a band 
of cows and calves looking like mice as they ran among 
the trees. 

It was getting late, and after some search we failed 

170 



AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS 

to find any trail leading down; so at last we plunged 
over the brink at a venture. It was very rough scram- 
bling, dropping from bench to bench, and in places it 
was not only difficult but dangerous for the loaded 
pack-animals. Here and there we were helped by well- 
beaten elk trails, which we could follow for several 
hundred yards at a time. On one narrow pine-clad 
ledge, we met a spike-bull face to face; and in scram- 
bling down a very steep, bare, rock-strewn shoulder, 
the loose stones started by the horses' hoofs, bounding 
in great leaps to the forest below, dislodged two cows. 
As evening fell, we reached the bottom, and pitched 
camp in a beautiful point of open pine forest, thrust 
out into the meadow. There was good shelter, and 
plenty of wood, water, and grass; we built a huge fire 
and put up our tents, scattering them in likely places 
among the pines, which grew far apart and without 
undergrowth. We dried our steaming clothes, and ate 
a hearty supper of elk meat; then we turned into our 
beds, warm and dry, and slept soundly under the canvas, 
while all night long the storm roared without. Next 
morning it still stormed fitfully; the high peaks and 
ridges round about were all capped with snow. Woody 
and I started on foot for an all-day tramp; the amount 
of game seen the day before showed that we were in a 
good elk country, where the elk had been so little dis- 
turbed that they were travelling, feeding, and whistling 
in daylight. For three hours we walked across the 
forest-clad spurs of the foot-hills. We roused a small 
band of elk in thick timber; but they rushed off before 
we saw them, with much smashing of dead branches. 
Then we climbed to the summit of the range. The 
wind was light and baffling; it blew from all points, 
veering every few minutes. There were occasional 

171 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

rain-squalls; our feet and legs were well soaked; and 
we became chilled through whenever we sat down to 
listen. We caught a glimpse of a big bull feeding up- 
hill, and followed him; it needed smart running to 
overtake him, for an elk, even while feeding, has a 
ground-covering gait. Finally we got within a hundred 
and twenty-five yards, but in very thick timber, and 
all I could see plainly was the hip and the after-part of 
the flank. I waited for a chance at the shoulder, but 
the bull got my wind and was off before I could pull 
trigger. It was just one of those occasions when there 
are two courses to pursue, neither very good, and when 
one is apt to regret whichever decision is made. 

At noon we came to the edge of a deep and wide gorge, 
and sat down shivering to await what might turn up, 
our fingers numb, and our wet feet icy. Suddenly the 
love-challenge of an elk came pealing across the gorge, 
through the fine, cold rain, from the heart of the forest 
opposite. An hour's stiff climb, down and up, brought 
us nearly to him; but the wind forced us to advance 
from below through a series of open glades. He was 
lying on a point of the cliff shoulder, surrounded by 
his cows; and he saw us and made off. An hour after- 
ward, as we were trudging up a steep hillside dotted 
with groves of fir and spruce, a young bull of ten points, 
roused from his day-bed by our approach, galloped 
across us some sixty yards off. We were in need of 
better venison than can be furnished by an old rut- 
ting bull; so I instantly took a shot at the fat and tender 
young ten-pointer. I aimed well ahead and pulled 
trigger just as he came to a small gully; and he fell into 
it in a heap with a resounding crash. This was on the 
birthday of my eldest small son; so I took him home 
the horns, "for his very own." On the way back that 

172 



AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS 

afternoon I shot off the heads of two blue grouse, as 
they perched in the pines. 

That evening the storm broke, and the weather 
became clear and very cold, so that the snow made the 
frosty mountains gleam like silver. The moon was full, 
and in the flood of light the wild scenery round our camp 
was very beautiful. As always where we camped for 
several days, we had fixed long tables and settles, and 
were most comfortable; and when we came in at night- 
fall, or sometimes long afterward, cold, tired, and 
hungry, it was sheer physical delight to get warm be- 
fore the roaring fire of pitchy stumps, and then to 
feast ravenously on bread and beans, on stewed or 
roasted elk venison, on grouse, and sometimes trout, 
and flapjacks with maple syrup. 

Next morning dawned clear and cold, the sky a 
glorious blue. Woody and I started to hunt over the 
great table-land, and led our stout horses up the moun- 
tainside, by elk trails so bad that they had to climb 
like goats. All these elk trails have one striking pe- 
culiarity. They lead through thick timber, but every 
now and then send off short, well-worn branches to 
some cliff edge or jutting crag, commanding a view far 
and wide over the country beneath. Elk love to stand 
on these lookout points, and scan the valleys and moun- 
tains round about. 

Blue grouse rose from beside our path; Clark's 
crows flew past us, with a hollow, flapping sound, or 
lit in the pine-tops, calling and flirting their tails; 
the gray-clad whiskey-jacks, with multitudinous cries, 
hopped and fluttered near us. Snow-shoe rabbits 
scuttled away, the big furry feet which give them their 
name already turning white. At last we came out on 
the great plateau, seamed with deep, narrow ravines. 

173 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

Reaches of pasture alternated with groves and open 
forests of varying size. Almost immediately we heard 
the bugle of a bull elk, and saw a big band of cows and 
calves on the other side of a valley. There were three 
bulls with them, one very large, and we tried to creep 
up on them; but the wind was baffling and spoiled 
our stalk. So we returned to our horses, mounted them, 
and rode a mile farther, toward a large open wood on a 
hillside. When within two hundred yards we heard di- 
rectly ahead the bugle of a bull, and pulled up short. In 
a moment I saw him walking through an open glade; he 
had not seen us. The slight breeze brought us down his 
scent. Elk have a strong characteristic smell; it is 
usually sweet, like that of a herd of Alderney cows; 
but in old bulls, while rutting, it is rank, pungent, and 
lasting. We stood motionless till the bull was out of 
sight, then stole to the wood, tied our horses, and trotted 
after him. He was travelling fast, occasionally calling; 
whereupon others in the neighborhood would answer. 
Evidently he had been driven out of some herd by the 
master-bull. 

He went faster than we did, and while we were vainly 
trying to overtake him we heard another very loud and 
sonorous challenge to our left. It came from a ridge 
crest at the edge of the woods, among some scattered 
clumps of the northern nut-pine or pinyon — a queer 
conifer, growing very high on the mountains, its multi- 
forked trunk and wide-spreading branches giving it the 
rounded top, and, at a distance, the general look of 
an oak rather than a pine. We at once walked toward 
the ridge, up-wind. In a minute or two, to our chagrin, 
we stumbled on an outlying spike-bull, evidently kept 
on the outskirts of the herd by the master-bull. I 
thought he would alarm all the rest; but, as we stood 

174 



AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS 

motionless, he could not see clearly what we were. He 
stood, ran, stood again, gazed at us, and trotted slowly 
off. We hurried forward as fast as we dared, and with 
too little care; for we suddenly came in view of two 
cows. As they raised their heads to look, Woody 
squatted down where he was, to keep their attention 
fixed, while I cautiously tried to slip off to one side 
unobserved. Favored by the neutral tint of my buck- 
skin hunting-shirt, with which my shoes, leggings, and 
soft hat matched, I succeeded. As soon as I was out 
of sight I ran hard and came up to a hillock crested with 
pinyons, behind which I judged I should find the herd. 
As I approached the crest, their strong, sweet smell 
smote my nostrils. In another moment I saw the tips 
of a pair of mighty antlers, and I peered over the crest 
with my rifle at the ready. Thirty yards off, behind a 
clump of pinyons, stood a huge bull, his head thrown 
back as he rubbed his shoulders with his horns. There 
were several cows around him, and one saw me im- 
mediately, and took alarm. I fired into the bull's 
shoulder, inflicting a mortal wound; but he went off, 
and I raced after him at top speed, firing twice into his 
flank; then he stopped, very sick, and I broke his neck 
with a fourth bullet. An elk often hesitates in the first 
moments of surprise and fright, and does not get really 
under way for two or three hundred yards; but, when 
once fairly started, he may go several miles, even though 
mortally wounded; therefore, the hunter, after his first 
shot, should run forward as fast as he can, and shoot 
again and again until the quarry drops. In this way 
many animals that would otherwise be lost are obtained, 
especially by the man who has a repeating rifle. Never- 
theless, the hunter should beware of being led astray 
by the ease with which he can fire half a dozen shots 

175 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

from his repeater; and he should aim as carefully with 
each shot as if it were his last. No possible rapidity of 
fire can atone for habitual carelessness of aim with the 
first shot. 

The elk I thus slew was a giant. His body was the 
size of a steer's, and his antlers, though not unusually 
long, were very massive and heavy. He lay in a glade, 
on the edge of a great cliff. Standing on its brink we 
overlooked a most beautiful country, the home of all 
homes for the elk: a wilderness of mountains, the im- 
mense evergreen forest broken by park and glade, by 
meadow and pasture, by bare hillside and barren table- 
land. Some five miles off lay the sheet of water known 
to the old hunters as Spotted Lake; two or three shal- 
low, sedgy places, and spots of geyser formation, made 
pale-green blotches on its wind-rippled surface. Far 
to the southwest, in daring beauty and majesty, the 
grand domes and lofty spires of the Tetons shot into 
the blue sky. Too sheer for the snow to rest on their 
sides, it yet filled the rents in their rough flanks, and 
lay deep between the towering pinnacles of dark rock. 

That night, as on more than one night afterward, 
a bull elk came down whistling to within two or three 
hundred yards of the tents, and tried to join the horse- 
herd. The moon had set, so I could not go after it. 
Elk are very restless and active throughout the night 
in the rutting season; but where undisturbed they feed 
freely in the daytime, resting for two or three hours 
about noon. 

Next day, which was rainy, we spent in getting in 
the antlers and meat of the two dead elk; and I shot off 
the heads of two or three blue grouse on the way home. 
The following day I killed another bull elk, following 
him by the strong, not unpleasing, smell, and hitting 

176 



AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS 

him twice as he ran, at about eighty yards. So far I 
had had good luck, kilKng everything I had shot at; 
but now the luck changed, through no fault of mine, 
as far as I could see, and Ferguson had his innings. 
The day after I killed this bull he shot two fine moun- 
tain rams; and during the remainder of our hunt he 
killed five elk — one cow, for meat, and four good bulls. 
The two rams were with three others, all old and with 
fine horns; Ferguson peeped over a lofty precipice and 
saw them coming up it only fifty yards below him. 
His first two and finest bulls were obtained by hard 
running and good shooting; the herds were on the move 
at the time, and only his speed of foot and soundness 
of wind enabled him to get near enough for a shot. 
One herd started before he got close, and he killed the 
master-bull by a shot right through the heart, as it 
trotted past, a hundred and fifty yards distant. 

As for me, during the next ten days I killed nothing 
save one cow for meat; and this though I hunted hard 
every day from morning till night, no matter what the 
weather. It was stormy, with hail and snow almost 
every day; and after working hard from dawn until 
nightfall, laboriously climbing the slippery mountain- 
sides, walking through the wet woods, and struggling 
across the bare plateaus and cliff shoulders, while the 
violent blasts of wind drove the frozen rain in our faces, 
we would come in after dusk, wet through and chilled 
to the marrow. Even when it rained in the valleys it 
snowed on the mountain tops, and there was no use 
trying to keep our feet dry. I got three shots at bull 
elk, two being very hurried snap-shots at animals run- 
ning in thick timber, the other a running shot in the 
open, at over two hundred yards; and I missed all three. 
On most days I saw no bull worth shooting; the two 

177 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

or three I did see or hear we failed to stalk, the light, 
shifty wind baffling us, or else an outlying cow which 
we had not seen giving the alarm. There were many 
blue and a few ruffed grouse in the woods, and I oc- 
casionally shot off the heads of a couple on my way 
homeward in the evening. In racing after one elk, I 
leaped across a gully and so bruised and twisted my 
heel on a rock that, for the remainder of my stay in the 
mountains, I had to walk on the fore part of that foot. 
This did not interfere much with my walking, however, 
except in going downhill. 

Our ill success was in part due to sheer bad luck; 
but the chief element therein was the presence of a 
great hunting-party of Shoshone Indians. Split into 
bands of eight or ten each, they scoured the whole 
country on their tough, surefooted ponies. They 
always hunted on horseback, and followed the elk at 
full speed wherever they went. Their method of 
hunting was to organize great drives, the riders strung 
in lines far apart; they signalled to one another by 
means of willow whistles, with which they also imitated 
the calling of the bull elk, thus tolling the animals to 
them, or making them betray their whereabout. As 
they slew whatever they could, but by preference cows 
and calves, and as they were very persevering, but also 
very excitable and generally poor shots, so that they 
wasted much powder, they not only wrought havoc 
among the elk, but also scared the survivors out of 
all the country over which they hunted. 

Day in and day out we plodded on. In a hunting 
trip the days of long monotony in getting to the ground, 
and the days of unrequited toil after it has been reached, 
always far outnumber the red-letter days of success. 
But it is just these times of failure that really test a 

178 



AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS 

hunter. In the long run, common sense and dogged 
perseverance avail him more than any other qualities. 
The man who does not give up, but hunts steadily and 
resolutely through the spells of bad luck until the luck 
turns, is the man who wins success in the end. 

After a week at Two-Ocean Pass, we gathered our 
pack-animals one frosty morning, and again set off 
across the mountains. A two days' jaunt took us to 
the summit of Wolverine Pass, near Pinyon Peak, be- 
side a little mountain tarn; each morning we found 
its surface skimmed with black ice, for the nights were 
cold. After three or four days, we shifted camp to the 
mouth of Wolverine Creek, to get off the hunting- 
grounds of the Indians. We had used up our last elk 
meat that morning, and when we were within a couple 
of hours' journey of our intended halting-place, Woody 
and I struck off on foot for a hunt. Just before sunset 
we came on three or four elk; a spike-bull stood for a 
moment behind some thick evergreens a hundred yards 
off. Guessing at his shoulder, I fired, and he fell dead 
after running a few rods. I had broken the luck, after 
ten days of ill success. 

Next morning Woody and I, with the packer, rode 
to where this elk lay. We loaded the meat on a pack- 
horse, and let the packer take both the loaded animal 
and our own saddle-horses back to camp, while we made 
a hunt on foot. We went up the steep, forest-clad 
mountainside, and before we had walked an hour heard 
two elk whistling ahead of us. The woods were open, 
and quite free from undergrowth, and we were able to 
advance noiselessly; there was no wind, for the weather 
was still, clear, and cold. Both of the elk were evidently 
very much excited, answering each other continually; 
they had probably been master-bulls, but had become 

179 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

so exhausted that their rivals had driven them from 
the herds, forcing them to remain in seclusion until 
they regained their lost strength. As we crept stealth- 
ily forward, the calling grew louder and louder, until 
we could hear the grunting sounds with which the 
challenge of the nearest ended. He was in a large 
wallow, which was also a lick. When we were still sixty 
yards off, he heard us, and rushed out, but wheeled and 
stood a moment to gaze, puzzled by my buckskin suit. 
I fired into his throat, breaking his neck, and down he 
went in a heap. Rushing in and turning, I called to 
Woody: "He's a twelve-pointer, but the horns are 
small !'* As I spoke I heard the roar of the challenge 
of the other bull not two hundred yards ahead, as if in 
defiant answer to my shot. 

Running quietly forward, I speedily caught a glimpse 
of his body. He was behind some fir-trees about seventy 
yards off, and I could not see which way he was standing, 
and so fired into the patch of fiank which was visible, 
aiming high, to break the back. My aim was true, 
and the huge beast crashed downhill through the ever- 
greens, pulling himself on his fore legs for fifteen or 
twenty rods, his hind quarters trailing. Racing for- 
ward, I broke his neck. His antlers were the finest I 
ever got. A couple of whiskey-jacks appeared at the 
first crack of the rifle with their customary astonishing 
familiarity and heedlessness of the hunter; they fol- 
lowed the wounded bull as he dragged his great carcass 
down the hill, and pounced with ghoulish bloodthirsti- 
ness on the gouts of blood that were sprinkled over the 
green herbage. 

These two bulls lay only a couple of hundred yards 
apart, on a broad game trail, which was as well beaten 
as a good bridle-path. We began to skin out the heads; 

180 



AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS 

and as we were finishing we heard another bull chal- 
lenging far up the mountain. He came nearer and 
nearer, and as soon as we had ended our work we 
grasped our rifles and trotted toward him along the 
game trail. He was very noisy, uttering his loud, 
singing challenge every minute or two. The trail was 
so broad and firm that we walked in perfect silence. 
After going only five or six hundred yards, we got very 
close indeed, and stole forward on tiptoe, listening to the 
roaring music. The sound came from a steep, narrow 
ravine, to one side of the trail, and I walked toward 
it with my rifle at the ready. A slight puff gave the 
elk my wind, and he dashed out of the ravine like mad; 
but he was only thirty yards off, and my bullet went 
into his shoulder as he passed behind a clump of young 
spruce. I plunged into the ravine, scrambled out of it, 
and raced after him. In a minute I saw him standing 
with drooping head, and two more shots finished him. 
He also bore fine antlers. It was a great piece of luck 
to get three such fine bulls at the cost of half a day's 
light work; but we had fairly earned them, having 
worked hard for ten days, through rain, cold, hunger, 
and fatigue, to no purpose. That evening my home- 
coming to camp, with three elk tongues and a brace of 
ruffed grouse hung at my belt, was most happy. 

Next day it snowed, but we brought a pack-pony to 
where the three great bulls lay, and took their heads to 
camp; the flesh was far too strong to be worth taking, 
for it was just the height of the rut. 

This was the end of my hunt; and a day later Hofer 
and I, with two pack-ponies, made a rapid push for the 
Upper Geyser Basin. We travelled fast. The first day 
was gray and overcast, a cold wind blowing strong in 
our faces. Toward evening we came on a bull elk in 

181 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

a willow thicket; lie was on his knees in a hollow, 
thrashing and beating the willows with his antlers. 
At dusk we halted and went into camp, by some small 
pools on the summit of the pass north of Red Mountain. 
The elk were calling all around us. We pitched our 
cosey tent, dragged great stumps for the fire, cut ever- 
green boughs for our beds, watered the horses, tethered 
them to improvised picket-pins in a grassy glade, and 
then set about getting supper ready. The wind had 
gone down, and snow was falling thick in large, soft 
flakes; we were evidently at the beginning of a heavy 
snow-storm. All night we slept soundly in our snug 
tent. When we arose at dawn there was a foot and a 
half of snow on the ground, and the flakes were falling 
as fast as ever. There is no more tedious work than 
striking camp in bad weather; and it was over two 
hours from the time we rose to the time we started. 
It is sheer misery to untangle picket-lines and to pack 
animals when the ropes are frozen; and by the time 
we had loaded the two shivering, wincing pack-ponies, 
and had bridled and saddled our own riding-animals, 
our hands and feet were numb and stiff with cold, 
though we were really hampered by our warm clothing. 
My horse was a wild, nervous roan, and as I swung 
carelessly into the saddle, he suddenly began to buck 
before I got my right leg over, and threw me off. My 
thumb was put out of joint. I pulled it in again, and 
speedily caught my horse in the dead timber. Then 
I treated him as what the cowboys call a "mean horse," 
and mounted him carefully, so as not to let him either 
buck or go over backward. However, his preliminary 
success had inspirited him, and a dozen times that day 
he began to buck, usually choosing a down grade, where 
the snow was deep, and there was much fallen timber. 

182 



AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS 

All day long we pushed steadily through the cold, 
blinding snow-storm. Neither squirrels nor rabbits 
were abroad; and a few Clark's crows, whiskey-jacks, 
and chickadees were the only living things we saw. 
At nightfall, chilled through, we reached the Upper 
Geyser Basin. Here I met a party of railroad sur- 
veyors and engineers, coming in from their summer's 
field-work. One of them lent me a saddle-horse and 
a pack-pony, and we went on together, breaking our 
way through the snow-choked roads to the Mammoth 
Hot Springs, while Hofer took my own horses back to 
Ferguson. 

I have described this hunt at length because, though 
I enjoyed it particularly on account of the comfort in 
which we travelled and the beauty of the land, yet, 
in point of success in finding and killing game, in value 
of trophies procured, and in its alternations of good and 
bad luck, it may fairly stand as the type of a dozen 
such hunts I have made. Twice I have been much 
more successful ; the difference being due to sheer luck, 
as I hunted equally hard in all three instances. Thus 
on this trip I killed and saw nothing but elk; yet the 
other members of the party either saw, or saw fresh 
signs of, not only blacktail deer, but sheep, bear, bison, 
moose, cougar, and wolf. Now, in 1889 I hunted 
over almost precisely similar country, only farther to 
the northwest, on the boundary between Idaho and 
Montana, and, with the exception of sheep, I stumbled 
on all the animals mentioned, and white goat in ad- 
dition, so that my bag of twelve head actually included 
eight species — much the best bag I ever made, and 
the only one that could really be called out of the com- 
mon. In 1884, on a trip to the Bighorn Mountains, I 
killed three bear, six elk, and six deer. In laying in 

183 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the winter stock of meat for my ranch I often far ex- 
celled these figures as far as mere numbers went; but 
on no other regular hunting trip, where the quality and 
not the quantity of the game was the prime considera- 
tion, have I ever equalled them; and on several where I 
worked hardest I hardly averaged a head a week. The 
occasional days or weeks of phenomenal luck are more 
than earned by the many others where no luck what- 
ever follows the very hardest work. Yet if a man 
hunts with steady resolution he is apt to strike enough 
lucky days amply to repay him for his trouble. 

On this Shoshone trip I fired fifty-eight shots. In 
preference to using the knife I generally break the neck 
of an elk which is still struggling; and I fire at one as 
long as it can stand, preferring to waste a few extra bul- 
lets, rather than see an occasional head of game escape. 
In consequence of these two traits the nine elk I got 
(two running at sixty and eighty yards, the others 
standing, at from thirty to a hundred) cost me twenty- 
three bullets; and I missed three shots — all three, it 
is but fair to say, diflficult ones. I also cut off the heads 
of seventeen grouse, with twenty- two shots; and killed 
two ducks with ten shots — fifty -eight in all. On the 
Bighorn trip I used a hundred and two cartridges. 
On no other trip did I use fifty. 

To me still-hunting elk in the mountains, when they 
are calling, is one of the most attractive of sports, not 
only because of the size and stately beauty of the quarry 
and the grand nature of the trophy, but because of the 
magnificence of the scenery, and the stirring, manly, 
exciting nature of the chase itself. It yields more 
vigorous enjoyment than does lurking stealthily through 
the grand but gloomy monotony of the marshy wood- 
land where dwells the moose. The climbing among 

184 



AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS 

the steep forest-clad and glade-strewn mountains is 
just difficult enough thoroughly to test soundness in 
wind and limb, while without the heart-breaking fa- 
tigue of white-goat hunting. The actual grapple with 
an angry grizzly is of course far more full of strong, 
eager pleasure; but bear-hunting is the most uncertain, 
and usually the least productive, of sports. 

As regards strenuous, vigorous work, and pleasurable 
excitement, the chase of the bighorn alone stands 
higher. But the bighorn, grand beast of the chase 
though he be, is surpassed in size, both of body and 
of horns, by certain of the giant sheep of Central Asia; 
whereas the wapiti is not only the most stately and 
beautiful of American game — far more so than the 
bison and moose, his only rivals in size — but is also 
the noblest of the stag kind throughout the world. 
Whoever kills him has killed the chief of his race; for 
he stands far above his brethren of Asia and Europe. 



185 



XI 



THE MOOSE; THE BEAST OF THE WOODLAND 

The moose is the giant of all deer; and many hunt- 
ers esteem it the noblest of American game. Beyond 
question there are few trophies more prized than the 
huge shovel horns of this strange dweller in the cold 
northland forests. 

I shot my first moose after making several fruitless 
hunting trips with this special game in view. The 
season I finally succeeded, it was only after having 
hunted two or three weeks in vain, among the Bitter 
Root Mountains, and the ranges lying southeast of 
them. 

I began about the first of September by making a 
trial with my old hunting friend Willis. We speedily 
found a country where there were moose, but of the 
animals themselves we never caught a glimpse. We 
tried to kill them by hunting in the same manner that 
we hunted elk; that is, by choosing a place where there 
was sign, and going carefully through it against or 
across the wind. However, this plan failed; though 
at that very time we succeeded in killing elk in this 
way, devoting one or two days to their pursuit. There 
were both elk and moose in the country, but they 
were usually found in different kinds of ground, though 
often close alongside one another. The former went 
in herds, the cows, calves, and yearlings by themselves, 
and they roamed through the higher and more open 
forests, well up toward timber-line. The moose, on the 
contrary, were found singly or in small parties com- 
posed at the outside of a bull, a cow, and her young 

186 



THE MOOSE 

of two years; for the moose is practically monogamous, 
in strong contrast to the highly polygamous wapiti 
and caribou. 

The moose did not seem to care much whether they 
lived among the summits of the mountains or not, so 
long as they got the right kind of country; for they 
were much more local in their distribution, and at this 
season less given to wandering than their kin with 
round horns. \Miat they wished was a cool, swampy 
region of very dense growth ; in the main chains of the 
northern Rockies even the valleys are high enough to 
be cold. Of course many of the moose lived on the 
wooded summits of the lower ranges; and most of 
them came down lower in winter than in summer, 
following about a fortnight after the elk; but if in a 
large tract of woods the cover was dense and the ground 
marshy, though it w^as in a valley no higher than the 
herds of the ranchmen grazed, or perchance even in 
the immediate neighborhood of a small frontier hamlet, 
then it might be chosen by some old bull who w^ished 
to lie in seclusion till his horns were grown, or by some 
cow w ith a calf to raise. Before settlers came to this 
high mountain region of western Montana, a moose 
would often thus live in an isolated marshy tract, sur- 
rounded by open country. They grazed throughout 
the summer on marsh plants, notably lily-stems, and 
nibbled at the tops of the very tall natural hay of the 
meadows. The legs of the beast are too long and the 
neck too short to allow it to graze habitually on short 
grass; yet in the early spring when greedy for the 
tender blades of young, green marsh-grass, the moose 
will often shuffle down on its knees to get at them, and 
it will occasionally perform the same feat to get a 
mouthful or two of snow in winter. 

187 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

The moose which Hved in isolated, exposed locaHties 
were speedily killed or driven away after the incoming 
of settlers; and at the time that we hunted we found 
no sign of them until we reached the region of contin- 
uous forest. Here, in a fortnight's hunting, we found 
as much sign as we wished, and plenty of it fresh; but 
the animals themselves we not only never saw, but 
we never so much as heard. Often after hours of care- 
ful still-hunting or cautious tracking, we found the 
footprints deep in the soft earth, showing where our 
quarry had winded or heard us, and had noiselessly 
slipped away from the danger. It is astonishing how 
quietly a moose can steal through the woods if it wishes : 
and it has what is to the hunter a very provoking habit 
of making a half or three-quarters circle before lying 
down, and then crouching with its head so turned that 
it can surely perceive any pursuer who may follow its 
trail. We tried every method to outwit the beasts. 
We attempted to track them; we beat through likely 
spots; sometimes we merely "sat on a log" and awaited 
events, by a drinking-hole, meadow, mud wallow, or 
other such place (a course of procedure which often 
works well in still-hunting) ; but all in vain. 

Our main difficulty lay in the character of the woods 
which the moose haunted. They were choked and 
tangled to the last degree, consisting of a mass of thick- 
growing conifers, with dead timber strewn in every 
direction, and young growth filling the spaces between 
the trunks. We could not see twenty yards ahead of 
us, and it was almost impossible to walk without 
making a noise. Elk were occasionally found in these 
same places; but usually they frequented more open 
timber, where the hunting was beyond comparison 
easier. Perhaps more experienced hunters would have 

188 



THE MOOSE 

killed their game ; though in such cover the best tracker 
and still-hunter alive cannot always reckon on success 
with really wary animals. But, be this as it may, we, 
at any rate, were completely baflfled, and I began to 
think that this moose-hunt, like all my former ones, 
was doomed to end in failure. 

However, a few days later I met a crabbed old 
trapper named Hank Griffin, who was going after 
beaver in the mountains, and who told me that if I 
would come with him he would show me moose. I 
jumped at the chance, and he proved as good as his 
word; though for the first two trials my ill luck did 
not change. 

At the time that it finally did change we had at 
last reached a place where the moose were on favorable 
ground. A high, marshy valley stretched for several 
miles between two rows of stony mountains, clad with 
a forest of rather small fir-trees. This valley was cov- 
ered with reeds, alders, and rank grass, and studded 
with little willow-bordered ponds and island-like clumps 
of spruce and graceful tamaracks. 

Having surveyed the ground and found moose sign 
the preceding afternoon, we were up betimes in the 
cool morning to begin our hunt. Before sunrise we 
were posted on a rocky spur of the foot-hills, behind a 
mask of evergreens; ourselves unseen we overlooked 
all the valley, and we knew we could see any animal 
which might be either feeding away from cover or on 
its journey homeward from its feeding-ground to its 
day-bed. 

As it grew lighter we scanned the valley with in- 
creasing care and eagerness. The sun rose behind us; 
and almost as soon as it was up we made out some 
large beast moving among the dwarf willows beside 

189 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

a little lake half a mile in our front. In a few minutes 
the thing walked out where the bushes were thinner, 
and we saw that it was a young bull moose browsing 
on the willow tops. He had evidently nearly finished 
his breakfast, and he stood idly for some moments, now 
and then lazily cropping a mouthful of twig tips. Then 
he walked off with great strides in a straight line across 
the marsh, splashing among the wet water-plants, and 
ploughing through boggy spaces with the indifference 
begotten of vast strength and legs longer than those of 
any other animal on this continent. At times he en- 
tered beds of reeds which hid him from view, though 
their surging and bending showed the wake of his 
passage; at other times he walked through meadows 
of tall grass, the withered yellow stalks rising to his 
flanks, while his body loomed above them, glistening 
black and wet in the level sunbeams. Once he stopped 
for a few moments on a rise of dry ground, seemingly 
to enjoy the heat of the young sun; he stood motion- 
less, save that his ears were continually pricked, and 
his head sometimes slightly turned, showing that even 
in this remote land he was on the alert. Once, with 
a somewhat awkward motion, he reached his hind leg 
forward to scratch his neck. Then he walked forward 
again into the marsh; where the water was quite deep 
he broke into the long, stretching, springy trot, which 
forms the characteristic gait of his kind, churning the 
marsh water into foam. He held his head straightfor- 
ward, the antlers resting on his shoulders. 

After a while he reached a spruce island, through 
which he walked to and fro; but evidently could 
find therein no resting-place quite to his mind, for he 
soon left and went on to another. Here after a lit- 
tle wandering he chose a point where there was some 

190 



THE MOOSE 

thick young growth, which hid him from view when he 
lay down, though not when he stood. After some turn- 
ing he settled himself in his bed just as a steer would. 

He could not have chosen a spot better suited for 
us. He was nearly at the edge of the morass, the open 
space between the spruce clump where he was lying 
and the rocky foot-hills being comparatively dry and 
not much over a couple of hundred yards broad; 
while some sixty yards from it, and between it and the 
hills, was a little hummock, tufted with firs, so as to 
afford us just the cover we needed. Keeping back 
from the edge of the morass we were able to walk 
upright through the forest, until we got the point 
where he was lying in a line with this little hummock. 
We then dropped on our hands and knees, and crept 
over the soft, wet sward, where there was nothing to 
make a noise. Wherever the ground rose at all we 
crawled flat on our bellies. The air was still, for it 
was a very calm morning. 

At last we reached the hummock, and I got into 
position for a shot, taking a final look at my faithful 
45-90 Winchester to see that all was in order. Peering 
cautiously through the shielding evergreens, I at first 
could not make out where the moose was lying, until 
my eye was caught by the motion of his big ears, as 
he occasionally flapped them lazily forward. Even 
then I could not see his outline; but I knew where he 
was, and having pushed my rifle forward on the moss, 
I snapped a dry twig to make him rise. My veins were 
thrilling and my heart beating with that eager, fierce 
excitement known only to the hunter of big game, 
and forming one of the keenest and strongest of the 
many pleasures which with him go to make up "the 
wild joy of living." 

191 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

As the sound of the snapping twig smote his ears 
the moose rose nimbly to his feet, with a Hghtness 
on which one would not have reckoned in a beast so 
heavy of body. He stood broadside to me for a mo- 
ment, his ungainly head slightly turned, while his ears 
twitched and his nostrils snuffed the air. Drawing a 
fine bead against his black hide, behind his shoulder 
and two-thirds of his body's depth below his shaggy 
withers, I pressed the trigger. He neither flinched nor 
reeled, but started with his regular ground-covering 
trot through the spruces; yet I knew he was mine, for 
the light blood sprang from both of his nostrils, and 
he fell dying on his side before he had gone thirty rods. 

Later in the fall I was again hunting among the lofty 
ranges which continue toward the southeast, the chain 
of the Bitter Root, between Idaho and Montana. 
There were but two of us, and we were travelling very 
light, each having but one pack-pony and the saddle- 
animal he bestrode. We were high among the moun- 
tains, and followed no regular trail. Hence our course 
was often one of extreme difficulty. Occasionally, we 
took our animals through the forest near timber-line, 
where the slopes were not too steep; again we threaded 
our way through a line of glades, or skirted the foot-hills, 
in an open, park country; and now and then we had 
to cross stretches of tangled mountain forest, making 
but a few miles a day, at the cost of incredible toil, and 
accomplishing even this solely by virtue of the won- 
derful docility and surefootedness of the ponies, and 
of my companion's skill with the axe and thorough 
knowledge of woodcraft. 

Late one cold afternoon we came out in a high 
Alpine valley in which there was no sign of any man's 
having ever been before us. Down its middle ran a 

192 



THE MOOSE 

clear brook. On each side was a belt of thick spruce 
forest, covering the lower flanks of the mountains. 
The trees came down in points and isolated clumps to 
the brook, the banks of which were thus bordered with 
open glades, rendering the travelling easy and rapid. 

Soon after starting up this valley we entered a 
beaver meadow of considerable size. It was covered 
with lush, rank grass, and the stream wound through 
it rather sluggishly in long curves, which were fringed 
by a thick growth of dwarfed willows. In one or two 
places it broadened into small ponds, bearing a few 
lily-pads. This meadow had been all tramped up by 
moose. Trails led hither and thither through the grass, 
the willow twigs were cropped off, and the muddy banks 
of the little black ponds were indented by hoof-marks. 
Evidently most of the lilies had been plucked. The 
footprints were unmistakable; a moose's foot is longer 
and slimmer than a caribou's, while on the other hand, 
it is much larger than an elk's, and a longer oval in 
shape. 

Most of the sign was old, this high Alpine meadow, 
surrounded by snow mountains, having clearly been a 
favorite resort for moose in the summer; but some 
enormous, fresh tracks told that one or more old bulls 
were still frequenting the place. 

The light was already fading, and, of course, we did 
not wish to camp where we were, because we would 
then certainly scare the moose. Accordingly we pushed 
up the valley for another mile, through an open forest, 
the ground being quite free from underbrush and dead 
timber, and covered with a carpet of thick moss, in 
which the feet sank noiselessly. Then we came to 
another beaver meadow, which offered fine feed for the 
ponies. On its edge we hastily pitched camp, just at 

193 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

dusk. We tossed down the packs in a dry grove, close 
to the brook, and turned the tired ponies loose in the 
meadow, hobbling the little mare that carried the bell. 
The ground was smooth. We threw a cross-pole from 
one to the other of two young spruces, which happened 
to stand handily, and from it stretched and pegged out 
a piece of canvas, which we were using as a shelter 
tent. Beneath this we spread our bedding, laying 
under it the canvas sheets in which it had been wrapped. 
There was still bread left over from yesterday's baking, 
and in a few moments the kettle was boiling and the 
frying-pan sizzling, while one of us skinned and cut 
into suitable pieces two grouse we had knocked over 
on our march. For fear of frightening the moose we 
built but a small fire, and went to bed soon after 
supper, being both tired and cold. Fortunately, what 
little breeze there was blew up the valley. 

At dawn I was awake, and crawled out of my buffalo- 
bag, shivering and yawning. My companion still 
slumbered heavily. WTiite frost covered whatever had 
been left outside. The cold was sharp, and I hurriedly 
sHpped a pair of stout moccasins on my feet, drew on 
my gloves and cap, and started through the ghostly 
woods for the meadow where we had seen the moose 
sign. The tufts of grass were stiff with frost; black 
ice skimmed the edges and quiet places of the little 
brook. 

I walked slowly, it being difficult not to make a 
noise by cracking sticks or brushing against trees, in 
the gloom; but the forest was so open that it favored 
me. When I reached the edge of the beaver meadow 
it was light enough to shoot, though the front sight 
still glimmered indistinctly. Streaks of cold red 
showed that the sun would soon rise. 

194 



THE MOOSE 

Before leaving the shelter of the last spruces I halted 
to listen; and almost immediately heard a curious 
splashing sound from the middle of the meadow, where 
the brook broadened into small willow-bordered pools. 
I knew at once that a moose was in one of these pools, 
wading about and pulling up the water-lilies by seizing 
their slippery stems in his lips, plunging his head deep 
under water to do so. The moose love to feed in 
this way in the hot months, when they spend all the 
time they can in the water, feeding or lying down; nor 
do they altogether abandon the habit even when the 
weather is so cold that icicles form in their shaggy coats. 

Crouching, I stole noiselessly along the edge of the 
willow thicket. The stream twisted through it from 
side to side in zigzags, so that every few rods I got a 
glimpse down a lane of black water. In a minute I 
heard a slight splashing near me; and on passing the 
next point of bushes, I saw the shadowy outline of the 
moose's hind quarters, standing in a bend of the water. 
In a moment he walked onward, disappearing. I ran 
forward a couple of rods, and then turned in among 
the willows, to reach the brook where it again bent 
back toward me. The splashing in the water, and the 
rustling of the moose's body against the frozen twigs, 
drowned the noise made by my moccasined feet. 

I strode out on the bank at the lower end of a long, 
narrow pool of water, dark and half -frozen. In this 
pool, half-way down and facing me, but a score of yards 
off, stood the mighty marsh beast, strange and uncouth 
in look as some monster surviving over from the 
Pliocene. His vast bulk loomed black and vague in 
the dim gray dawn; his huge antlers stood out sharply; 
columns of steam rose from his nostrils. For several 
seconds he fronted me motionless; then he began to 

195 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

turn, slowly, and as if he had a stiff neck. When 
quarter-way round I fired into his shoulder; whereat 
he reared and bounded on the bank with a great leap, 
vanishing in the willows. Through these I heard him 
crash like a whirlwind for a dozen rods; then down he 
fell, and when I reached the spot he had ceased to 
struggle. The ball had gone through his heart. 

When a moose is thus surprised at close quarters, 
it will often stand at gaze for a moment or two, and 
then turn stiffly around until headed in the right direc- 
tion; once thus headed aright it starts off with ex- 
traordinary speed. 

The flesh of the moose is very good; though some 
deem it coarse. Old hunters, who always like rich, 
greasy food, rank the moose's nose with a beaver's 
tail, as the chief of backwood delicacies; personally 
I never liked either. The hide of the moose, like the 
hide of the elk, is of very poor quality, much inferior 
to ordinary buckskin; caribou hide is the best of all, 
especially when used as webbing for snow-shoes. 

The moose is very fond of frequenting swampy woods 
throughout the summer, and indeed late into the fall. 
These swampy woods are not necessarily in the lower 
valleys, some being found very high among the moun- 
tains. By preference it haunts those containing lakes, 
where it can find the long lily-roots of which it is so 
fond, and where it can escape the torment of the 
mosquitoes and deer-flies by lying completely sub- 
merged save for its nostrils. It is a bold and good 
swimmer, readily crossing lakes of large size; but it 
is of course easily slain if discovered by canoe-men 
while in the water. It travels well through bogs, but 
not as well as the caribou; and it will not venture on 
ice at all if it can possibly avoid it. 

196 



THE MOOSE 

After the rut begins the animals roam everywhere 
through the woods; and where there are hardwood 
forests the winter yard is usually made among them, 
on high ground, away from the swamps. In the 
mountains the deep snows drive the moose, like all 
other game, down to the lower valleys, in hard winters. 
In the summer it occasionally climbs to the very sum- 
mits of the wooded ranges, to escape the flies; and it 
is said that in certain places where wolves are plenty 
the cows retire to the tops of the mountains to calve. 
More often, however, they select some patch of very 
dense cover, in a swamp or by a lake, for this purpose. 
Their ways of life of course vary with the nature of 
the country they frequent. In the towering chains of 
the Rockies, clad in sombre and unbroken evergreen 
forests, their habits, in regard to winter and summer 
homes, and choice of places of seclusion for cows with 
young calves and bulls growing their antlers, differ 
from those of their kind which haunt the comparatively 
low, hilly, lake-studded country of Maine and Nova 
Scotia, where the forests are of birch, beech, and maple, 
mixed with pine, spruce, and hemlock. 

The moose being usually monogamous is never found 
in great herds like the wapiti and caribou. Occasionally 
a troop of fifteen or twenty individuals may be seen, 
but this is rare; more often it is found singly, in pairs, 
or in family parties, composed of a bull, a cow, and 
two or more calves and yearlings. In yarding, two 
or more such families may unite to spend the winter 
together in an unusually attractive locality; and during 
the rut many bulls are sometimes found together, per- 
haps following the trail of a cow in single file. 

In the fall, winter, and early spring, and in certain 
places during summer, the moose feeds principally by 

197 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

browsing, though always willing to vary its diet by 
mosses, lichens, fungi, and ferns. In the Eastern 
forests, with their abundance of hardwood, the birch, 
maple, and moose-wood form its favorite food. In the 
Rocky Mountains, where the forests are almost purely 
evergreen, it feeds on such willows, alders, and aspens 
as it can find, and also, when pressed by necessity, on 
balsam, fir, spruce, and very young pine. It peels the 
bark between its hard palate and sharp lower teeth, 
to a height of seven or eight feet; these "peelings" 
form conspicuous moose signs. It crops the juicy, bud- 
ding twigs and stem-tops to the same height; and if 
the tree is too tall it "rides" it; that is, straddles the 
slender trunk with its fore legs, pushing it over and 
walking up it until the desired branches are within 
reach. No beast is more destructive to the young 
growth of a forest than the moose. Where much per- 
secuted it feeds in the late evening, early morning, and 
by moonlight. Where rarely disturbed it passes the 
day much as cattle do, alternately resting and feeding 
for two or three hours at a time. 

Young moose, when caught, are easily tamed, and 
are very playful, delighting to gallop to and fro, kicking, 
striking, butting, and occasionally making grotesque 
faces. As they grow old they are apt to become dan- 
gerous, and even their play takes the form of a mock 
fight. Some lumbermen I knew on the Aroostook, in 
Maine, once captured a young moose, and put it in a 
pen of logs. A few days later they captured another, 
somewhat smaller, and put it in the same pen, thinking 
the first would be grateful at having a companion. But 
if it was it dissembled its feelings, for it promptly fell 
on the unfortunate newcomer and killed it before it 
could be rescued. 

198 



THE MOOSE 

During the rut the bulls seek the cows far and wide, 
uttering continually throughout the night a short, loud 
roar, which can be heard at a distance of four or five 
miles; the cows now and then respond with low, plain- 
tive bellows. The bulls also thrash the tree-trunks 
with their horns, and paw big holes in soft ground; 
and when two rivals come together at this season they 
fight with the most desperate fury. It is chiefly in 
these battles with one another that the huge antlers 
are used; in contending with other foes they strike 
terrible blows with their fore hoofs and also sometimes 
lash out behind like a horse. The bear occasionally 
makes a prey of the moose; the cougar is a more 
dangerous enemy in the few districts where both ani- 
mals are found at all plentifully; but next to man its 
most dreaded foe is the big timber-wolf, that veritable 
scourge of all animals of the deer kind. Against all of 
these the moose defends itself valiantly; a cow with a 
calf and a rutting bull being especially dangerous op- 
ponents. In deep snows through which the great deer 
flounders while its adversary runs lightly on the crust, 
a single wolf may overcome and slaughter a big bull 
moose; but with a fair chance no one or two wolves 
would be a match for it. Desperate combats take 
place before a small pack of wolves can master the 
shovel-horned quarry, unless it is taken at a hopeless 
disadvantage; and in these battles the prowess of the 
moose is shown by the fact that it is no unusual thing 
for it to kill one or more of the ravenous throng; gen- 
erally by a terrific blow of the fore leg, smashing a 
wolf's skull or breaking its back. I have known of 
several instances of wolves being found dead, having 
perished in this manner. Still, the battle usually ends 
the other way, the wolves being careful to make the 

199 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

attack with the odds in their favor; and even a small 
pack of the ferocious brutes will in a single winter often 
drive the moose completely out of a given district. 
Both cougar and bear generally reckon on taking the 
moose unawares, when they jump on it. In one case 
that came to my knowledge, a black bear was killed by 
a cow moose whose calf he had attacked. 

In the Northeast a favorite method of hunting the 
moose is by "calling" the bulls in the rutting season, 
at dawn or nightfall; the caller imitating their cries 
through a birch-bark trumpet. If the animals are at 
all wary, this kind of sport can only be carried on in 
still weather, as the approaching bull always tries to 
get the wind of the caller. It is also sometimes slain 
by fire-hunting, from a canoe, as the deer are killed 
in the Adirondacks. This, however, is but an ignoble 
sport; and to kill the animal while it is swimming in 
a lake is worse. However, there is sometimes a spice 
of excitement even in these unworthy methods of the 
chase; for a truculent moose will do its best, with 
hoofs and horns, to upset the boat. 

The true way to kill the noble beast, however, is by 
fair still-hunting. There is no grander sport than still- 
hunting the moose, whether in the vast pine and birch 
forests of the Northeast, or among the stupendous 
mountain masses of the Rockies. The moose has 
wonderfully keen nose and ears, though its eyesight is 
not remarkable. Most hunters assert that it is the 
wariest of all game, and the most difficult to kill. I 
have never been quite satisfied that this was so; it 
seems to me that the nature of the ground wherein it 
dwells helps it even more than do its own sharp senses. 
It is true that I made many trips in vain before killing 
my first moose; but then I had to hunt through 

200 



THE MOOSE 

tangled timber, where I could scarcely move a step 
without noise, and could never see thirty yards ahead. 
If moose were found in open park-like forests like those 
where I first killed elk, on the Bighorn Mountains, or 
among brushy coulees and bare hills, like the Little 
Missouri Bad Lands, where I first killed blacktail 
deer, I doubt whether they would prove especially 
difficult animals to bag. My own experience is much 
too limited to allow me to speak with any certainty 
on the point; but it is borne out by what more skilled 
hunters have told me. In the Big Hole Basin, in south- 
west Montana, moose were quite plentiful in the late 
seventies. Two or three of the old settlers, whom 
I know as veteran hunters and trustworthy men, have 
told me that in those times the moose were often found 
in very accessible localities; and that when such was 
the case they were quite as easily killed as elk. In fact, 
when run across by accident they frequently showed a 
certain clumsy slowness of apprehension which amount- 
ed to downright stupidity. One of the most successful 
moose-hunters I know is Colonel Cecil Clay, of the De- 
partment of Law, in Washington ; he it was who killed 
the moose composing the fine group mounted by Mr. 
Hornaday, in the National Museum. Colonel Clay 
lost his right arm in the Civil War; but is an expert 
rifle-shot nevertheless, using a short, light 44-caliber 
old-style Winchester carbine. With this weapon he 
has killed over a score of moose, by fair still-hunting; 
and he tells me that on similar ground he considers it 
if anything rather less easy to still-hunt and kill a 
white tail deer than it is to kill a moose. 

My friend Colonel James Jones killed two moose in 
a day in northwestern Wyoming, not far from the 
Tetons; he was alone when he shot them and did not 

201 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

find them especially wary. Ordinarily, moose are shot 
at fairly close range; but another friend of mine, Mr. 
E. P. Rogers, once dropped one with a single bullet, 
at a distance of nearly three hundred yards. This 
happened by Bridger's Lake, near Two-Ocean Pass. 

The moose has a fast walk, and its ordinary gait 
when going at any speed is a slashing trot. Its long 
legs give it a wonderful stride, enabling it to clear 
down timber and high obstacles of all sorts without 
altering its pace. It also leaps well. If much pressed 
or startled it breaks into an awkward gallop, which is 
quite fast for a few hundred yards, but which speedily 
tires it out. After being disturbed by the hunter, a 
moose usually trots a long distance before halting. 

One thing which renders the chase of the moose 
particularly interesting is the fact that there is in it 
on rare occasions a spice of peril. Under certain circum- 
stances it may be called dangerous quarry, being, 
properly speaking, the only animal of the deer kind 
which ever fairly deserves the title. In a hand-to-hand 
grapple an elk or caribou, or even under exceptional 
circumstances a blacktail or a whitetail, may show 
itself an ugly antagonist; and indeed a maddened elk 
may for a moment take the offensive; but the moose 
is the only one of the tribe with which this attitude is 
at all common. In bodily strength and capacity to do 
harm it surpasses the elk; and in temper it is far more 
savage and more apt to show fight when assailed by 
man; exactly as the elk in these respects surpasses the 
common deer. 

Two hunters with whom I was well acquainted once 
wintered between the Wind River Mountains and the 
Three Tetons, many years ago, in the days of the 
buffalo. They lived on game, killing it on snow-shoes; 

202 



THE MOOSE 

for the most part wapiti and deer, but also bison, and 
one moose, though they saw others. The wapiti bulls 
kept their antlers two months longer than the moose; 
nevertheless, when chased they rarely made an effort 
to use them, while the hornless moose displayed far 
more pugnacity, and also ran better through the deep 
snow. The winter was very severe, the snows were 
heavy, and the crusts hard; so that the hunters had 
little trouble in overtaking their game, although— 
being old mountain-men and not hide-hunters — they 
killed only what was needed. Of course in such hunting 
they came very close to the harried game, usually after 
a chase of from twenty minutes to three hours. They 
found that the ordinary deer would scarcely charge 
under any circumstances; that among the wapiti it was 
only now and then that individuals would turn upon 
their pursuers— though they sometimes charged boldly; 
but that both the bison and especially the moose, 
when worried and approached too near, would often 
turn to bay and make charge after charge in the most 
resolute manner, so that they had to be approached 
with some caution. 

Under ordinary conditions, however, there is very 
little danger, indeed, of a moose charging. A charge 
does not take place once in a hundred times when the 
moose is killed by fair still-hunting; and it is altogether 
exceptional for those who assail them from boats or 
canoes to be put in jeopardy. Even a cow moose, with 
her calf, will run if she has the chance; and a rutting 
bull will do the same. Such a bull when wounded may 
walk slowly forward, grunting savagely, stamping with 
his forefeet, and slashing the bushes with his antlers; 
but, if his antagonist is any distance off, he rarely 
actually runs at him. Yet there are now and then 

203 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

found moose prone to attack on slight provocation; 
for these great deer differ as widely as men in courage 
and ferocity. Occasionally a hunter is charged in the 
fall when he has lured the game to him by calling, or 
when he has wounded it after a stalk. In one well- 
authenticated instance which was brought to my at- 
tention, a settler on the left bank of the St. John, in 
New Brunswick, was trampled to death by a bull moose 
which he had called to him and wounded. A New 
Yorker of my acquaintance, Doctor Merrill, was 
charged under rather peculiar circumstances. He 
stalked and mortally wounded a bull which promptly 
ran toward him. Between them was a gully in which it 
disappeared. Immediately afterward, as he thought, it 
reappeared on his side of the gully, and with a second 
shot he dropped it. Walking forward, he found to 
his astonishment that with his second bullet he had 
killed a cow moose; the bull lay dying in the gully, 
out of which he had scared the cow by his last rush. 

However, speaking broadly, the danger to the still- 
hunter engaged in one of the legitimate methods of the 
chase is so small that it may be disregarded; for he usu- 
ally kills his game at some little distance, while the 
moose, as a rule, only attacks if it has been greatly 
worried and angered, and if its pursuer is close at hand. 
When a moose is surprised and shot at by a hunter some 
way off, its one thought is of flight. Hence, the hunters 
who are charged by moose are generally those who 
follow them during the late winter and early spring, 
when the animals have yarded and can be killed on 
snow-shoes— by "crusting," as it is termed, a very 
destructive, and often a very unsportsmanlike, species 
of chase. 

If the snowfall is very light, moose do not yard at 

204 



THE MOOSE 

all; but in a hard winter they begin to make their 
yards in December. A "yard" is not, as some people 
seem to suppose, a trampled-down space, with definite 
boundaries; the term merely denotes the spot which a 
moose has chosen for its winter home, choosing it 
because it contains plenty of browse in the shape of 
young trees and saplings, and perhaps also because it 
is sheltered to some extent from the fierce winds and 
heaviest snow-drifts. The animal travels to and fro 
across this space in straight lines and irregular circles 
after food, treading in its own footsteps, where prac- 
ticable. As the snow steadily deepens, these lines of 
travel become beaten paths. There results finally a 
space half a mile square — sometimes more, sometimes 
very much less, according to the lay of the land, and 
the number of moose yarding together — where the 
deep snow is seamed in every direction by a network 
of narrow paths along which a moose can travel at 
speed, its back level with the snow round about. Some- 
times, when moose are very plentiful, many of these 
yards lie so close together that the beasts can readily 
make their way from one to another. When such is 
the case, the most expert snow-shoer, under the most 
favorable conditions, cannot overtake them, for they 
can then travel very fast through the paths, keeping 
their gait all day. In the early decades of the present 
century, the first settlers in Aroostook County, Maine, 
while moose-hunting in winter, were frequently baffled 
in this manner. 

When hunters approach an isolated yard the moose 
immediately leave it and run off through the snow. 
If there is no crust, and if their long legs can reach the 
ground, the snow itself impedes them but little, because 
of their vast strength and endurance. Snow-drifts 

205 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

which render an ordinary deer absolutely helpless, and 
bring even an elk to a standstill, offer no impediment 
whatever to a moose. If, as happens very rarely, the 
loose snow is of such depth that even the stilt-like legs 
of the moose cannot touch solid earth, it flounders 
and struggles forward for a little time, and then sinks 
exhausted ; for a caribou is the only large animal which 
can travel under such conditions. If there be a crust, 
even though the snow is not remarkably deep, the 
labor of the moose is vastly increased, as it breaks 
through at every step, cutting its legs and exhausting 
itself. A caribou, on the other hand, will go across a 
crust as well as a man on snow-shoes, and can never be 
caught by the latter, save under altogether exceptional 
conditions of snowfall and thaw. 

"Crusting," or following game on snow-shoes, is, as 
the name implies, almost always practised after the 
middle of February, when thaws begin, and the snow 
crusts on top. The conditions for success in crusting 
moose and deer are very different. A crust through 
which a moose would break at every stride may carry 
a running deer without mishap; while the former animal 
would trot at ease through drifts in which the latter 
would be caught as if in a quicksand. 

Hunting moose on snow, therefore, may be, and 
very often is, mere butchery; and because of this pos- 
sibility or probability, and also because of the fact that 
it is by far the most destructive kind of hunting, and 
is carried on at a season when the bulls are hornless 
and the cows heavy with calf, it is rigidly and properly 
forbidden wherever there are good game-laws. Yet 
this kind of hunting may also be carried on under 
circumstances which render it if not a legitimate, yet 
a most exciting and manly sport, only to be followed by 

206 



THE MOOSE 

men of tried courage, hardihood, and skill. This is 
not because it ever necessitates any skill whatever in 
the use of the rifle, or any particular knowledge of 
hunting-craft; but because under the conditions spoken 
of the hunter must show great endurance and resolution, 
and must be an adept in the use of snow-shoes. 

It all depends upon the depth of the snow and the 
state of the crust. If when the snow is very deep there 
comes a thaw, and if it then freezes hard, the moose 
are overtaken and killed with ease; for the crust cuts 
their legs, they sink to their bellies at every plunge, 
and speedily become so worn out that they can no 
longer keep ahead of any man who is even moderately 
skilful in the use of snow-shoes; though they do not, 
as deer so often do, sink exhausted after going a few 
rods from their yard. Under such circumstances a few 
hardy hunters or settlers, who are perfectly reckless in 
slaughtering game, may readily kill all the moose in a 
district. It is a kind of hunting which just suits the 
ordinary settler, who is hardy and enduring, but knows 
little of hunting-craft proper. 

If the snow is less deep, or the crust not so heavy, 
the moose may travel for scores of miles before it is 
overtaken; and this even though the crust be strong 
enough to bear a man wearing snow-shoes without 
breaking. The chase then involves the most exhausting 
fatigue. Moreover, it can be carried on only by those 
who are very skilful in the use of snow-shoes. These 
snow-shoes are of two kinds. In the Northeast, and in 
the most tangled forests of the Northwest, the webbed 
snow-shoes are used; on the bare mountainsides, and 
in the open forests of the Rockies, the long narrow 
wooden skis, or Norwegian snow-skates, are preferred, 
as upon them men can travel much faster, though they 

207 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

are less handy in thick timber. Having donned his 
snow-shoes and struck the trail of a moose, the hunter 
may have to follow it three days if the snow is of only 
ordinary depth, with a moderate crust. He shuffles 
across the snow without halt while daylight lasts, and 
lies down wherever he happens to be when night strikes 
him, probably with a little frozen bread as his only 
food. The hunter thus goes through inordinate labor, 
and suffers from exposure; not infrequently his feet 
are terribly cut by the thongs of the snow-shoes, and 
become sore and swollen, causing great pain. When 
overtaken after such a severe chase, the moose is usually 
so exhausted as to be unable to make any resistance; 
in all likelihood it has run itself to a standstill. Ac- 
cordingly, the quality of the firearms makes but little 
difference in this kind of hunting. Many of the most 
famous old moose-hunters of Maine, in the long-past 
days before the Civil War, when moose were plenty 
there, used what were known as " three -dollar " guns: 
light, single-barrelled smooth-bores. One whom I knew 
used a flint-lock musket, a relic of the War of 1812. 
Another in the course of an exhausting three days' 
chase lost the lock off his cheap, percussion-cap gun; 
and when he overtook the moose he had to explode the 
cap by hammering it with a stone. 

It is in *' crusting," when the chase has lasted but 
a comparatively short time, that moose most frequently 
show fight; for they are not cast into a state of wild 
panic by a sudden and unlooked-for attack by a man 
who is a long distance from them, but on the contrary, 
after being worried and irritated, are approached very 
near by foes from whom they have been fleeing for 
hours. Nevertheless, in the majority of cases even 
crusted moose make not the slightest attempt at re- 

208 



THE MOOSE 

taliation. If the chase has been very long, or if the 
depth of the snow and character of the crust are ex- 
ceptionally disadvantageous to them, they are so utterly 
done out, when overtaken, that they cannot make a 
struggle, and may even be killed with an axe. I know 
of at least five men who have thus killed crusted moose 
with an axe; one in the Rocky Mountains, one in Min- 
nesota, three in Maine. 

But in ordinary snow a man who should thus at- 
tempt to kill a moose would merely jeopardize his own 
life; and it is not an uncommon thing for chased moose, 
when closely approached by their pursuers, even when 
the latter carry guns and are expert snow-shoers, to 
charge them with such ferocity as to put them in much 
peril. A brother of one of my cow-hands, a man from 
Maine, was once nearly killed by a cow moose. She 
had been in a yard with her last year's calf when started. 
After two or three hours' chase he overtook them. 
They were travelling in single file, the cow breaking her 
path through the snow, while the calf followed close 
behind, and in his nervousness sometimes literally ran 
up on her. The man trotted close alongside; but, 
before he could fire, the old cow spun round and charged 
him, her mane bristling and her green eyes snapping 
with rage. It happened that just there the snow be- 
came shallow, and the moose gained so rapidly that 
the man, to save his life, sprang up a tree. As he did 
so the cow reared and struck at him, one forefoot 
catching in his snow-shoe and tearing it clear off, giving 
his ankle a bad wrench. After watching him a minute 
or two she turned and continued her flight; whereupon 
he climbed down the tree, patched up his torn snow-shoe 
and limped after the moose, which he finally killed. 

An old hunter named Purvis told me of an adventure 

209 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

of the kind, which terminated fatally. He was hunting 
near the Coeur d'Alene Mountains with a mining pros- 
pector named Pingree; both were originally from New 
Hampshire, Late in November there came a heavy 
fall of snow, deep enough to soon bring a deer to a 
standstill, although not so deep as to hamper a moose's 
movement. The men bound on their skis and started 
to the borders of the lake, to kill some blacktail. In a 
thicket close to the lake's brink they suddenly came 
across a bull moose; a lean old fellow, still savage from 
the rut. Pingree, who was nearest, fired at and wounded 
him; whereupon he rushed straight at the man, 
knocked him down before he could turn round on his 
skis, and began to pound him with his terrible forefeet. 
Summoned by his comrade's despairing cries, Purvis 
rushed round the thickets, and shot the squealing, 
trampling monster through the body, and immediately 
after had to swing himself up a small tree to avoid its 
furious rush. The moose did not turn after this charge, 
but kept straight on, and was not seen again. The 
wounded man was past all help, for his chest was 
beaten in, and he died in a couple of hours. 



210 



XII 



THE BISON OR AMERICAN BUFFALO 

When we became a nation in 1776, the buffaloes, 
the first animals to vanish when the wilderness is settled, 
roved to the crests of the mountains which mark the 
western boundaries of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the 
Carolinas. They were plentiful in what are now the 
States of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. But by 
the beginning of the present century they had been 
driven beyond the Mississippi; and for the next eighty 
years they formed one of the most distinctive and char- 
acteristic features of existence on the great plains. 
Their numbers were countless — incredible. In vast 
herds of hundreds of thousands of individuals, they 
roamed from the Saskatchewan to the Rio Grande and 
westward to the Rocky Mountains. They furnished 
all the means of livelihood to the tribes of Horse 
Indians, and to the curious population of French Metis, 
or Half-breeds, on the Red River, as well as to those 
dauntless and archetypical wanderers, the white hunters 
and trappers. Their numbers slowly diminished, but 
the decrease was very gradual until after the Civil War. 
They were not destroyed by the settlers, but by the 
railways and the skin-hunters. 

After the ending of the Civil War, the work of 
constructing transcontinental railway-lines was pushed 
forward with the utmost vigor. These supplied cheap 
and indispensable, but hitherto wholly lacking, means 
of transportation to the hunters; and at the same time 
the demand for buffalo robes and hides became very 
great, while the enormous numbers of the beasts, and 

211 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the comparative ease with which they were slaughtered, 
attracted throngs of adventurers. The result was such 
a slaughter of big game as the world had never before 
seen; never before were so many large animals of one 
species destroyed in so short a time. Several million 
buffaloes were slain. In fifteen years from the time 
the destruction fairly began the great herds were ex- 
terminated. In all probability there are not now, all 
told, five hundred head of wild buffaloes on the Amer- 
ican continent; and no herd of a hundred individuals 
has been in existence since 1884. 

The first great break followed the building of the 
Union Pacific Railway. All the buffaloes of the middle 
region were then destroyed, and the others were split 
into two vast sets of herds, the northern and the south- 
ern. The latter were destroyed first, about 1878; the 
former not until 1883. My own chief experience with 
buffaloes was obtained in the latter year, among small 
bands and scattered individuals, near my ranch on the 
Little Missouri; I have related it elsewhere. But two 
of my kinsmen were more fortunate and took part in 
the chase of these lordly beasts when the herds still 
darkened the prairie as far as the eye could see. 

During the first two months of 1877, my brother 
Elliott, then a lad not seventeen years old, made a 
buffalo-hunt toward the edge of the Staked Plains in 
northern Texas. He was thus in at the death of the 
southern herds; for all, save a few scattering bands, 
were destroyed within two years of this time. He was 
with my cousin, John Roosevelt, and they went out 
on the range with six other adventurers. It was a 
party of just such young men as frequently drift to 
the frontier. All were short of cash, and all were hardy, 
vigorous fellows, eager for excitement and adventure. 

212 



THE BISON OR AMERICAN BUFFALO 

My brother was much the youngest of the party, and 
the least experienced; but he was well-grown, strong, 
and healthy, and very fond of boxing, wrestling, run- 
ning, riding, and shooting; moreover, he had served 
an apprenticeship in hunting deer and turkeys. Their 
mess-kit, ammunition, bedding, and provisions were 
carried in two prairie-wagons, each drawn by four 
horses. In addition to the teams they had six saddle- 
animals — all of them shaggy, unkempt mustangs. 
Three or four dogs, setters and half-bred greyhounds, 
trotted along behind the wagons. Each man took his 
turn for two days as teamster and cook; and there 
were always two with the wagons, or camp, as the case 
might be, while the other six were off hunting, usually 
in couples. The expedition was undertaken partly for 
sport and partly with the hope of profit; for, after 
purchasing the horses and wagons, none of the party 
had any money left, and they were forced to rely upon 
selling skins and hides, and when near the forts, meat. 
They started on January 2, and shaped their course 
for the headwaters of the Salt Fork of the Brazos, the 
centre of abundance for the great buffalo-herds. Dur- 
ing the first few days they were in the outskirts of the 
settled country, and shot only small game — quail and 
prairie-fowl; then they began to kill turkey, deer, and 
antelope. These they swapped for flour and feed at 
the ranches or squalid, straggling frontier towns. On 
several occasions the hunters were lost, spending the 
night out in the open, or sleeping at a ranch, if one was 
found. Both towns and ranches were filled with rough 
customers; all of my brother's companions were mus- 
cular, hot-headed fellows; and as a consequence they 
were involved in several savage free fights, in which, 
fortunately, nobody was seriously hurt. My brother 

213 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

kept a very brief diary, the entries being fairly startling 
from their conciseness, A number of times the mention 
of their arrival, either at a halting-place, a little village, 
or a rival buffalo camp, is followed by the laconic re- 
mark, ''big fight," or "big row"; but once they evi- 
dently concluded discretion to be the better part of 
valor, the entry for January 20 being, "On the road 
— passed through Belknap — too lively, so kept on to 
the Brazos — very late." The buffalo camps in par- 
ticular were very jealous of one another, each party 
regarding itself as having exclusive right to the range 
it was the first to find; and on several occasions this 
feeling came near involving my brother and his com- 
panions in serious trouble. 

While slowly driving the heavy wagons to the hunt- 
ing-grounds they suffered the usual hardships of plains 
travel. The weather, as in most Texas winters, alter- 
nated between the extremes of heat and cold. There 
had been little rain; in consequence water was scarce. 
Twice they were forced to cross wild, barren wastes, 
w^here the pools had dried up, and they suffered terribly 
from thirst. On the first occasion the horses were in 
good condition, and they travelled steadily, with only 
occasional short halts, for over thirty-six hours, by 
which time they were across the waterless country. 
The journal reads: "January 27th. — Big hunt — no 
water, and we left Quinn's blockhouse this morning 
3 A.M. — on the go all night — hot. January 28. — No 
water — hot — at seven we struck water, and by eight 
Stinking Creek — grand 'hurrah.' " On the second 
occasion, the horses were weak and travelled slowly, so 
the party went forty-eight hours without drinking. 
"February 19th. — Pulled on twenty-one miles — trail 
bad — freezing night, no water, and wolves after our 

214 



THE BISON OR AMERICAN BUFFALO 

fresh meat. 20. — Made nineteen miles over prairie; 
again only mud, no water, freezing hard — frightful 
thirst. 21st. — Thirty miles to Clear Fork, fresh water." 
These entries were hurriedly jotted down at the time, 
by a boy who deemed it unmanly to make any espe- 
cial note of hardship or suffering; but every plains- 
man will understand the real agony implied in work- 
ing hard for two nights, one day, and portions of two 
others, without water, even in cool weather. During 
the last few miles the staggering horses were only just 
able to drag the lightly loaded wagon — for they had 
but one with them at the time — while the men plodded 
along in sullen silence, their mouths so parched that 
they could hardly utter a word. My own hunting and 
ranching were done in the North where there is more 
water; so I have never had a similar experience. Once 
I took a team in thirty-six hours across a country where 
there was no water; but by good luck it rained heavily 
in the night, so that the horses had plenty of wet grass, 
and I caught the rain in my slicker, and so had enough 
water for myself. Personally, I have but once been as 
long as twerty-six hours without water. 

The party pitched their permanent camp in a canyon 
of the Brazos known as Canyon Blanco. The last few 
days of their journey they travelled beside the river 
through a veritable hunter's paradise. The drought 
had forced all the animals to come to the larger water- 
courses, and the country was literally swarming with 
game. Every day, and all day long, the wagons trav- 
elled through the herds of antelopes that grazed on 
every side, while, whenever they approached the can- 
yon brink, bands of deer started from the timber that 
fringed the river's course; often, even the deer wan- 
dered out on the prairie with the antelope. Nor was 

215 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the game shy; for the hunters, both red and white, fol- 
lowed only the buffaloes, until the huge, shaggy herds 
were destroyed, and the smaller beasts were in con- 
sequence but little molested. 

Once my brother shot five antelopes from a single 
stand, when the party were short of fresh venison; 
he was out of sight and to leeward, and the antelopes 
seemed confused rather than alarmed at the rifle-re- 
ports and the fall of their companions. As was to be 
expected where game was so plenty, wolves and coyotes 
also abounded. At night they surrounded the camp, 
wailing and howling in a kind of shrieking chorus 
throughout the hours of darkness; one night they 
came up so close that the frightened horses had to be 
hobbled and guarded. On another occasion a large 
wolf actually crept into camp, where he was seized by 
the dogs, and the yelling, writhing knot of combatants 
rolled over one of the sleepers; finally, the long-toothed 
prowler managed to shake himself loose, and vanished 
in the gloom. One evening they were almost as much 
startled by a visit of a different kind. They were just 
finishing supper when an Indian stalked suddenly and 
silently out of the surrounding darkness, squatted down 
in the circle of firelight, remarked gravely, "Me Tonk," 
and began helping himself from the stew. He belonged 
to the friendly tribe of Tonka ways, so his hosts speedily 
recovered their equanimity; as for him, he had never 
lost his, and he sat eating by the fire until there was 
literally nothing left to eat. The panic caused by his 
appearance was natural; for at that time the Comanches 
were a scourge to the buffalo-hunters, ambushing them 
and raiding their camps; and several bloody fights 
had taken place. 

Their camp had been pitched near a deep pool or 

216 



THE BISON OR AMERICAN BUFFALO 

water-hole. On both sides the bluffs rose like walls, 
and where they had crumbled and lost their sheerness, 
the vast buffalo-herds, passing and repassing for count- 
less generations, had worn furrowed trails so deep that 
the backs of the beasts were but little above the sur- 
rounding soil. In the bottom, and in places along the 
crests of the cliffs that hemmed in the canyon-like 
valley, there were groves of tangled trees, tenanted by 
great flocks of wild turkeys. Once my brother made 
two really remarkable shots at a pair of these great 
birds. It was at dusk, and they were flying directly 
overhead from one cliff to the other. He had in his 
hand a 38-caliber Ballard rifle, and, as the gobblers 
winged their way heavily by, he brought both down 
with two successive bullets. This was of course mainly 
a piece of mere luck; but it meant good shooting, 
too. The Ballard was a very accurate, handy little 
weapon; it belonged to me, and was the first rifle I 
ever owned or used. With it I had once killed a deer, 
the only specimen of large game I had then shot; and 
I presented the rifle to my brother when he went to 
Texas. In our happy ignorance we deemed it quite 
good enough for buffalo or anything else; but out on 
the plains my brother soon found himself forced to 
procure a heavier and more deadly weapon. 

When camp was pitched the horses were turned loose 
to graze and refresh themselves after their trying jour- 
ney, during which they had lost flesh wofully. They 
were watched and tended by the two men who were 
always left in camp, and, save on rare occasions, were 
only used to haul in the buffalo-hides. The camp- 
guards for the time being acted as cooks; and, though 
coffee and flour both ran short and finally gave out, 
fresh meat of every kind was abundant. The camp 

217 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

was never without buffalo beef, deer, and antelope 
venison, wild turkeys, prairie-chickens, quails, ducks, 
and rabbits. The birds were simply "potted," as 
occasion required; when the quarry was deer or ante- 
lope, the hunters took the dogs with them to run down 
the wounded animals. But almost the entire attention 
of the hunters was given to the buffalo. After an eve- 
ning spent in lounging round the camp-fire and a sound 
night's sleep, wrapped in robes and blankets, they 
would get up before daybreak, snatch a hurried break- 
fast, and start off in couples through the chilly dawn. 
The great beasts were very plentiful; in the first day's 
hunt twenty were slain; but the herds were restless 
and ever on the move. Sometimes they would be 
seen right by the camp, and again it would need an 
all-day's tramp to find them. There was no diflSculty 
in spying them — the chief trouble with forest game; 
for on the prairie a buffalo makes no effort to hide and 
its black, shaggy bulk looms up as far as the eye can 
see. Sometimes they were found in small parties of 
three or four individuals, sometimes in bands of about 
two hundred, and again in great herds of many thou- 
sands; and solitary old bulls, expelled from the herds, 
were common. If on broken land, among hills and 
ravines, there was not much difficulty in approaching 
from the leeward; for, though the sense of smell in the 
buffalo is very acute, they do not see well at a distance 
through their overhanging frontlets of coarse and 
matted hair. If, as was generally the case, they were 
out on the open, rolling prairie, the stalking was far 
more difficult. Every hollow, every earth hummock 
and sage-bush had to be used as cover. The hunter 
wriggled through the grass flat on his face, pushing 
himself along for perhaps a quarter of a mile by his 

218 



THE BISON OR AMERICAN BUFFALO 

toes and fingers, heedless of the spiny cactus. When 
near enough to the huge, unconscious quarry the hunter 
began firing, still keeping himself carefully concealed. 
If the smoke was blown away by the wind, and if the 
buffaloes caught no glimpse of the assailant, they 
would often stand motionless and stupid until many 
of their number had been slain, the hunter being careful 
not to fire too high, aiming just behind the shoulder, 
about a third of the way up the body, that his bullet 
might go through the lungs. Sometimes, even after 
they saw the man, they would act as if confused and 
panic-struck, huddling together and staring at the 
smoke puffs ; but generally they were off at a lumbering 
gallop as soon as they had an idea of the point of 
danger. When once started, they ran for many miles 
before halting, and their pursuit on foot was extremely 
laborious. 

One morning my cousin and brother had been left 
in camp as guards. They were sitting idly warming 
themselves in the first sunbeams, when their attention 
was sharply drawn to four buffaloes that were coming 
to the pool to drink. The beasts came down a game 
trail, a deep rut in the bluff, fronting where they were 
sitting, and they did not dare to stir for fear of being 
discovered. The buffaloes walked into the pool, and 
after drinking their fill, stood for some time with the 
water running out of their mouths, idly lashing their 
sides with their short tails, enjoying the bright warmth 
of the early sunshine; then, with much splashing and 
the gurgling of soft mud, they left the pool and clam- 
bered up the bluff with unwieldy agility. As soon as 
they turned, my brother and cousin ran for their rifles, 
but before they got back the buffaloes had crossed the 
bluff crest. Climbing after them, the two hunters 

219 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

found, when they reached the summit, that their game, 
instead of halting, had struck straight off across the 
prairie at a slow lope, doubtless intending to rejoin 
the herd they had left. After a moment's consul- 
tation the men went in pursuit, excitement overcoming 
their knowledge that they ought not, by rights, to 
leave camp. They struck a steady trot, following the 
animals by sight until they passed over a knoll, and 
then trailing them. AMiere the grass was long, as it 
was for the first four or five miles, this was a work of 
no difficulty, and they did not break their gait, only 
glancing now and then at the trail. As the sun rose 
and the day became warm, their breathing grew quicker; 
and the sweat rolled off their faces as they ran across 
the rough prairie sward, up and down the long inclines, 
now and then shifting their heavy rifles from one 
shoulder to the other. But they were in good training, 
and they did not have to halt. At last they reached 
stretches of bare ground, sun-baked and grassless, where 
the trail grew dim; and here they had to go very slowly, 
carefully examining the faint dents and marks made in 
the soil by the heavy hoofs, and unravelling the trail 
from the mass of old footmarks. It was tedious work, 
but it enabled them to completely recover their breath 
by the time that they again struck the grass-land; and 
but a few hundred yards from its edge, in a slight 
hollow, they saw the four buffaloes just entering a herd 
of fifty or sixty that were scattered out grazing. The 
herd paid no attention to the newcomers, and these 
immediately began to feed greedily. After a whispered 
consultation, the two hunters crept back, and made 
a long circle that brought them well to leeward of the 
herd, in line with a slight rise in the ground. They then 
crawled up to this rise and, peering through the tufts 

220 



THE BISON OR AMERICAN BUFFALO 

of tall, rank grass, saw the unconscious beasts a hundred 
and twenty-five or fifty yards away. They fired to- 
gether, each mortally wounding his animal, and then, 
rushing in as the herd halted in confusion, and following 
them as they ran, impeded by numbers, hurry, and 
panic, they eventually got three more. 

On another occasion the same two hunters nearly 
met with a frightful death, bemg overtaken by a vast 
herd of stampeded buffaloes. All animals that go in 
herds are subject to these instantaneous attacks of 
uncontrollable terror, under the influence of which 
they become perfectly mad and rush headlong in dense 
masses on any form of death. Horses, and more espe- 
cially cattle, often suffer from stampedes; it is a dan- 
ger against which the cowboys are compelled to be 
perpetually on guard. A band of stampeded horses, 
sweeping in mad terror up a valley, will dash against 
a rock or tree with such violence as to leave several dead 
animals at its base, while the survivors race on without 
halting; they wiU overturn and destroy tents and 
wagons, and a man on foot caught in the rush has but 
a small chance for his life. A buffalo stampede is 
much worse — or rather was much worse, in the old 
days because of the great weight and immense numbers 
of the beasts, which, in a fury of heedless terror, 
plunged over cliffs and into rivers, and bore down 
whatever was in their path. On the occasion in gues- 
tion, my brother and cousin were on their way home- 
ward. They were just mounting one of the long, low 
swells, into which the prairie was broken, when they 
heard a low, muttering, rumbling noise, like far-off 
thunder. It grew steadily louder, and, not knowing 
what it meant, they hurried forward to the top of the 
rise. As they reached it, they stopped short in terror 

221 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

and amazement, for before them the whole prairie was 
black with madly rushing buffaloes. 

Afterward they learned that another couple of hunt- 
ers, four or five miles off, had fired into and stampeded 
a large herd. This herd, in its rush, gathered others, 
all thundering along together in uncontrollable and in- 
creasing panic. 

The surprised hunters were far away from any broken 
ground or other place of refuge, while the vast herd of 
huge, plunging, maddened beasts was charging straight 
down on them not a quarter of a mile distant. Down 
they came! — thousands upon thousands, their front 
extending a mile in breadth, while the earth shook 
beneath their thunderous gallop, and, as they came 
closer, their shaggy frontlets loomed dimly through 
the columns of dust thrown up from the dry soil. The 
two hunters knew that their only hope for life was 
to split the herd, which, though it had so broad a 
front, was not very deep. If they failed they would 
inevitably be trampled to death. 

Waiting until the beasts were in close range, they 
opened a rapid fire from their heavy breech-loading 
rifles, yelling at the top of their voices. For a moment 
the result seemed doubtful. The line thundered steadily 
down on them; then it swayed violently, as two or 
three of the brutes immediately in their front fell be- 
neath the bullets, while their neighbors made violent 
efforts to press off sidewise. Then a narrow wedge- 
shaped rift appeared in the line, widening as it came 
closer, and the buffaloes, shrinking from their foes in 
front, strove desperately to edge away from the danger- 
ous neighborhood: shouts and shots were redoubled; 
the hunters were almost choked by the cloud of dust, 
through which they could see the stream of dark, huge 

222 



THE BISON OR AMERICAN BUFFALO 

bodies passing within rifle-length on either side; and 
in a moment the peril was over, and the two men were 
left alone on the plain, unharmed, though with their 
nerves terribly shaken. The herd careered on toward 
the horizon, save five individuals which had been killed 
or disabled by the shots. 

On another occasion, when my brother was out with 
one of his friends, they fired at a small herd containing 
an old bull; the bull charged the smoke, and the whole 
herd followed him. Probably they were simply stam- 
peded, and had no hostile intention; at any rate, after 
the death of their leader, they rushed by without 
doing any damage. 

But buffaloes sometimes charged with the utmost 
determination, and were then dangerous antagonists. 
My cousin, a very hardy and resolute hunter, had a 
narrow escape from a wounded cow which he followed 
up a steep bluff or sand cliff. Just as he reached the 
summit, he was charged, and was only saved by the 
sudden appearance of his dog, which distracted the 
cow's attention. He thus escaped with only a tumble 
and a few bruises. 

My brother also came in for a charge, while killing 
the biggest bull that was slain by any of the party. 
He was out alone, and saw a small herd of cows and 
calves at some distance, with a huge bull among them, 
towering above them like a giant. There was no break 
in the ground, nor any tree nor bush near them, but, 
by making a half-circle, my brother managed to creep 
up against the wind behind a slight roll in the prairie 
surface, until he was within seventy-five yards of the 
grazing and unconscious beasts. There were some cows 
and calves between him and the bull, and he had to 
wait some moments before they shifted position, as 

223 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the herd grazed onward and gave him a fair shot; in 
the interval they had moved so far forward that he 
was in plain view. His first bullet struck just behind 
the shoulder; the herd started and looked around, but 
the bull merely lifted his head and took a step forward, 
his tail curled up over his back. The next bullet like- 
wise struck fair, nearly in the same place, telling with 
a loud "pack !" against the thick hide, and making the 
dust fly up from the matted hair. Instantly the great 
bull wheeled and charged in headlong anger, while the 
herd fled in the opposite direction. On the bare prairie, 
with no spot of refuge, it was useless to try to escape, 
and the hunter, with reloaded rifle, waited until the 
bull was not far off, then drew up his weapon and fired. 
Either he was nervous, or the bull at the moment 
bounded over some obstacle, for the ball went a little 
wild; nevertheless, by good luck, it broke a fore leg, 
and the great beast came crashing to the earth, and 
was slain before it could struggle to its feet. 

Two days after this event, a war-party of Coman- 
ches swept down along the river. They "jumped" a 
neighboring camp, killing one man and wounding 
two more, and at the same time ran off all but three 
of the horses belonging to our eight adventurers. With 
the remaining three horses and one wagon they set out 
homeward. The march was hard and tedious; they lost 
their way and were in jeopardy from quicksands and 
cloudbursts; they suffered from thirst and cold, their 
shoes gave out, and their feet were lamed by cactus 
spines. At last they reached Fort Griff en in safety, and 
great was their ravenous rejoicing when they procured 
some bread — for during the final fortnight of the hunt 
they had been without flour or vegetables of any kind, or 
even coffee, and had subsisted on fresh meat "straight." 

224 



THE BISON OR AMERICAN BUFFALO 

Nevertheless, it was a very healthy, as well as a very 
pleasant and exciting experience; and I doubt if any 
of those who took part in it will ever forget their great 
buffalo-hunt on the Brazos. 

My friend, General W. H. Walker of Virginia, had 
an experience in the early fifties with buffaloes on the 
upper Arkansas River, which gives some idea of their 
enormous numbers at that time. He was camped with 
a scouting-party on the banks of the river, and had 
gone out to try to shoot some meat. There were many 
buffaloes in sight, scattered, according to their custom, 
in large bands. When he was a mile or two away from 
the river a dull roaring sound in the distance attracted 
his attention, and he saw that a herd of buffalo far to 
the south, away from the river, had been stampeded 
and was running his way. He knew that if he was 
caught in the open by the stampeded herd his chance 
for life would be small, and at once ran for the river. 
By desperate efforts he reached the breaks in the sheer 
banks just as the buffaloes reached them, and got into 
a position of safety on the pinnacle of a little bluff. 
From this point of vantage he could see the entire plain. 
To the very verge of the horizon the brown masses of 
the buffalo bands showed through the dust clouds, 
coming on with a thunderous roar like that of surf. 
Camp was a mile away, and the stampede luckily 
passed to one side of it. Watching his chance he finally 
dodged back to the tent, and all that afternoon watched 
the immense masses of buffalo, as band after band tore 
to the brink of the bluffs on one side, raced down them, 
rushed through the water, up the bluffs on the other 
side, and again off over the plain, churning the sandy, 
shallow stream into a ceaseless tumult. When dark- 
ness fell there was no apparent decrease in the numbers 

225 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

that were passing, and all through that night the con- 
tinuous roar showed that the herds were still thrashing 
across the river. Toward dawn the sound at last 
ceased, and General Walker arose somewhat irritated, 
as he had reckoned on killing an ample supply of meat, 
and he supposed that there would be now no bison 
left south of the river. To his astonishment, when he 
strolled up on the bluffs and looked over the plain, it 
was still covered far and wide with groups of buffalo, 
grazing quietly. Apparently there were as many on 
that side as ever, in spite of the many scores of thou- 
sands that must have crossed over the river during 
the stampede of the afternoon and night. The barren- 
ground caribou is the only American animal which is 
now ever seen in such enormous herds. 

In 1862 Mr. Clarence King, while riding along the 
overland trail through western Kansas, passed through 
a great buffalo-herd, and was himself injured in an 
encounter with a bull. The great herd was then passing 
north, and Mr. King reckoned that it must have covered 
an area nearly seventy miles by thirty in extent; the 
figures representing his rough guess, made after travel- 
ling through the herd crosswise, and upon knowing how 
long it took to pass a given point going northward. 
This great herd of course was not a solid mass of buf- 
faloes; it consisted of innumerable bands of every size, 
dotting the prairie within the limits given. Mr. King 
was mounted on a somewhat unmanageable horse. On 
one occasion in following a band he wounded a large 
bull, and became so wedged in by the maddened animals 
that he was unable to avoid the charge of the bull, 
which was at its last gasp. Coming straight toward 
him it leaped into the air and struck the after-part of 
the saddle full with its massive forehead. The horse 

226 



THE BISON OR AMERICAN BUFFALO 

was hurled to the ground with a broken back, and 
King's leg was likewise broken, while the bull turned a 
complete somersault over them and never rose again. 

In the recesses of the Rocky Mountains, from Colo- 
rado northward through Alberta, and in the depths 
of the subarctic forest beyond the Saskatchewan, there 
have always been found small numbers of the bison, 
locally called the mountain-buffalo and wood-buffalo; 
often indeed the old hunters term these animals 
"bison," although they never speak of the plains 
animals save as buffalo. They form a slight variety 
of what was formerly the ordinary plains bison, inter- 
grading with it; on the whole they are darker in color, 
with longer, thicker hair, and in consequence with the 
appearance of being heavier-bodied and shorter-legged. 
They have been sometimes spoken of as forming a 
separate species; but, judging from my own limited 
experience, and from a comparison of the many hides 
I have seen, I think they are really the same ani- 
mal, many individuals of the two so-called varieties 
being quite indistinguishable. In fact the only mod- 
erate-sized herd of wild bison in existence to-day, the 
protected herd in the Yellowstone Park, is composed 
of animals intermediate in habits and coat between 
the mountain and plains varieties — as were all the herds 
of the Bighorn, Big Hole, Upper Madison, and Upper 
Yellowstone valleys. 

However, the habitat of these wood and mountain 
bison yielded them shelter from hunters in a way that 
the plains never could, and hence they have always 
been harder to kill in the one place than in the other; 
for precisely the same reasons that have held good with 
the elk, which have been completely exterminated 
from the plains, while still abundant in many of the 

227 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

forest fastnesses of the Rockies. Moreover, the bison's 
dull eyesight is no special harm in the woods, while 
it is peculiarly hurtful to the safety of any beast on 
the plains, where eyesight avails more than any other 
sense, the true game of the plains being the prongbuck, 
the most keen-sighted of American animals. On the 
other hand, the bison's hearing, of little avail on the 
plains, is of much assistance in the woods; and its 
excellent nose helps equally in both places. 

Though it was always more difficult to kill the bison 
of the forests and mountains than the bison of the 
prairie, yet now that the species is, in its wild state, 
hovering on the brink of extinction, the difficulty is 
immeasurably increased. A merciless and terrible proc- 
ess of natural selection, in which the agents were rifle- 
bearing hunters, has left as the last survivors in a 
hopeless struggle for existence only the wariest of the 
bison and those gifted with the sharpest senses. That 
this was true of the last lingering individuals that 
survived the great slaughter on the plains is well shown 
by Mr. Hornaday in his graphic account of his cam- 
paign against the few scattered buffalo which still lived 
in 1886 between the Missouri and the Yellowstone, 
along the Big Dry. The bison of the plains and the 
prairies have now vanished; and so few of their 
brethren of the mountains and the northern forests 
are left, that they can just barely be reckoned among 
American game; but whoever is so fortunate as to 
find any of these animals must work his hardest, and 
show all his skill as a hunter if he wishes to get one. 

In the fall of 1889 I heard that a very few bison were 
still left around the head of Wisdom River. Thither 
I went and hunted faithfully; there was plenty of 
game of other kind, but of bison not a trace did we see. 

228 



THE BISON OR AMERICAN BUFFALO 

Nevertheless a few days later that same year I came 
across these great wild cattle at a time when I had no 
idea of seeing them. 

It was, as nearly as we could tell, in Idaho, just 
south of the Montana boundary-line, and some twenty- 
five miles west of the line of Wyoming. We were 
camped high among the mountains, with a small pack- 
train. On the day in question we had gone out to find 
moose, but had seen no sign of them, and had then 
begun to climb over the higher peaks with an idea of 
getting sheep. The old hunter who was with me was, 
very fortunately, suffering from rheumatism, and he 
therefore carried a long staff instead of his rifle; I say 
fortunately, for if he had carried his rifle it would have 
been impossible to stop his firing at such game as bison, 
nor would he have spared the cows and calves. 

About the middle of the afternoon we crossed a low, 
rocky ridge, above timber-line, and saw at our feet a 
basin or round valley of singular beauty. Its walls 
were formed by steep mountains. At its upper end 
lay a small lake, bordered on one side by a meadow of 
emerald green. The lake's other side marked the edge 
of the frowning pine forest which filled the rest of the 
valley, and hung high on the sides of the gorge which 
formed its outlet. Beyond the lake the ground rose 
in a pass evidently much frequented by game in bygone 
days, their trails lying along it in thick zigzags, each 
gradually fading out after a few hundred yards, and 
then starting again in a little different place, as game 
trails so often seem to do. 

We bent our steps toward these trails, and no sooner 
had we reached the first than the old hunter bent over 
it with a sharp exclamation of wonder. There in the 
dust were the unmistakable hoof-marks of a small band 

229 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

of bison, apparently but a few hours old. They were 
headed toward the lake. There had been half a dozen 
animals in the party; one a big bull, and two calves. 

We immediately turned and followed the trail. It 
led down to the little lake, where the beasts had spread 
and grazed on the tender, green blades, and had drunk 
their fill. The footprints then came together again, 
showing where the animals had gathered and walked 
off in single file to the forest. Evidently they had come 
to the pool in the early morning, walking over the game 
pass from some neighboring valley, and after drinking 
and feeding had moved into the pine forest to find some 
spot for their noontide rest. 

It was a very still day, and there were nearly three 
hours of daylight left. Without a word my silent com- 
panion, who had been scanning the whole country with 
hawk-eyed eagerness, besides scrutinizing the sign on 
his hands and knees, took the trail, motioning me to 
follow. In a moment we entered the woods, breathing 
a sigh of relief as we did so; for while in the meadow 
we could never tell that the buffalo might not see us, 
if they happened to be lying in some place with a 
commanding lookout. 

The old hunter was thoroughly roused, and he showed 
himself a very skilful tracker. We were much favored 
by the character of the forest, which was rather open, 
and in most places free from undergrowth and down 
timber. As in most Rocky Mountain forests the tim- 
ber was small, not only as compared to the giant trees 
of the groves of the Pacific coast, but as compared 
to the forests of the Northeast. The ground was 
covered with pine-needles and soft moss, so that it 
was not difficult to walk noiselessly. Once or twice 
when I trod on a small dry twig, or let the nails in my 

230 



THE BISON OR AMERICAN BUFFALO 

shoes clink slightly against a stone, the hunter turned 
to me with a frown of angry impatience; but as he 
walked slowly, continually halting to look ahead, as 
well as stooping over to examine the trail, I did not 
find it very difficult to move silently. I kept a little 
behind him and to one side, save when he crouched to 
take advantage of some piece of cover, and I crept in 
his footsteps. I did not look at the trail at all, but kept 
watching ahead, hoping at any moment to see the game. 

It was not very long before we struck their day-beds, 
which were made on a knoll, where the forest was open 
and where there was much down timber. After leaving 
the day-beds the animals had at first fed separately 
around the grassy base and sides of the knoll, and had 
then made off in their usual single file, going straight 
to a small pool in the forest. After drinking they had 
left this pool, and travelled down toward the gorge at 
the mouth of the basin, the trail leading along the sides 
of the steep hill, which were dotted by open glades; 
while the roar of the cataracts by which the stream 
was broken ascended from below\ Here we moved 
with redoubled caution, for the sign had grown very 
fresh and the animals had once more scattered and 
begun feeding. When the trail led across the glades 
we usually skirted them so as to keep in the timber. 

At last, on nearing the edge of one of these glades 
we saw a movement among the young trees on the 
other side, not fifty yards away. Peering through the 
safe shelter yielded by some thick evergreen bushes, 
we speedily made out three bison, a cow, a calf, and a 
yearling, grazing greedily on the other side of the glade, 
under the fringing timber; all with their heads uphill. 
Soon another cow and calf stepped out after them. 
I did not wish to shoot, waiting for the appearance of 

231 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the big bull which I knew was accompanying them. 

So for several minutes I watched the great, clumsy, 
shaggy beasts, as all unconscious they grazed in the 
open glade. Behind them rose the dark pines. At 
the left of the glade the ground fell away to form the 
side of a chasm; down in its depths the cataracts 
foamed and thundered; beyond, the huge mountains 
towered, their crests crimsoned by the sinking sun. 
Mixed with the eager excitement of the hunter was 
a certain half-melancholy feeling as I gazed on these 
bison, themselves part of the last remnant of a doomed 
and nearly vanished race. Few, indeed, are the men 
who now have, or ever more shall have, the chance of 
seeing the mightiest of American beasts, in all his wild 
vigor, surrounded by the tremendous desolation of his 
far-off mountain home. 

At last, when I had begun to grow very anxious 
lest the others should take alarm, the bull likewise 
appeared on the edge of the glade, and stood with 
outstretched head, scratching his throat against a 
young tree, which shook violently. I aimed low, behind 
his shoulder, and pulled trigger. At the crack of the 
rifle all the bison, without the momentary halt of terror- 
struck surprise so common among game, turned and 
raced off at headlong speed. The fringe of young pines 
beyond and below the glade cracked and swayed as if 
a whirlwind were passing, and in another moment they 
reached the top of a very steep incline, thickly strewn 
with boulders and dead timber. Down this they 
plunged with reckless speed ; their surefootedness was a 
marvel in such seemingly unwieldy beasts. A column of 
dust obscured their passage, and under its cover they 
disappeared in the forest; but the trail of the bull was 
marked by splashes of frothy blood, and we followed 

232 



THE BISON OR AMERICAN BUFFALO 

it at a trot. Fifty yards beyond the border of the 
forest we found the stark black body stretched motion- 
less. He was a splendid old bull, still in his full vigor, 
with large, sharp horns, and heavy mane and glossy 
coat; and I felt the most exulting pride as I handled 
and examined him; for I had procured a trophy such 
as can fall henceforth to few hunters indeed. 

It was too late to dress the beast that evening; so, 
after taking out the tongue and cutting off enough 
meat for supper and breakfast, we scrambled down to 
near the torrent, and after some search found a good 
spot for camping. Hot and dusty from the day's hard 
tramp, I undressed and took a plunge in the stream, 
the icy water making me gasp. Then, having built a 
slight lean-to of brush, and dragged together enough 
dead timber to burn all night, we cut long alder twigs, 
sat down before some embers raked apart, and grilled 
and ate our buffalo meat with the utmost relish. Night 
had fallen; a cold wind blew up the valley; the torrent 
roared as it leaped past us and drowned our words as 
we strove to talk over our adventures and success; 
while the flame of the fire flickered and danced, lighting 
up with continual vivid flashes the gloom of the forest 
round about. 



233 



XIII 



THE BLACK BEAR 



Next to the whitetail deer the black bear is the 

commonest and most widely distributed of American 

big game. It is still found quite plentifully in northern 

New England, in the Adirondacks, Catskills, and along 

the entire length of the Alleghanies, as well as in the 

swamps and cane-brakes of the Southern States. It is 

also common in the great forests of northern Michigan, 

Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and throughout the Rocky 

Mountains and the timbered ranges of the Pacific 

coast. In the East it has always ranked second only 

to the deer among the beasts of chase. The bear and 

the buck were the staple objects of pursuit of all the 

old hunters. They were more plentiful than the bison 

and elk even in the long vanished days when these two 

great monarchs of the forest still ranged eastward to 

Virginia and Pennsylvania. The wolf and the cougar 

were always too scarce and too shy to yield much profit 

to the hunter. The black bear is a timid, cowardly 

animal, and usually a vegetarian, though it sometimes 

preys on the sheep, hogs, and even cattle of the settler, 

and is very fond of raiding his corn and melons. Its 

meat is good and its fur often valuable; and in its 

chase there is much excitement, and occasionally a 

slight spice of danger, just enough to render it attractive; 

so it has always been eagerly followed. Yet it still 

holds its own, though in greatly diminished numbers, 

in the more thinly settled portions of the country. 

One of the standing riddles of American zoology is the 

fact that the black bear, which is easier killed and less 

234 



THE BLACK BEAR 

prolific than the wolf, should hold its own in the land 
better than the latter, this being directly the reverse 
of what occurs in Europe, where the brown bear is 
generally exterminated before the wolf. 

In a few wild spots in the East, in northern Maine, 
for instance, here and there in the neighborhood of 
the upper Great Lakes, in the east Tennessee and 
Kentucky mountains and the swamps of Florida and 
Mississippi, there still lingers an occasional representa- 
tive of the old wilderness hunters. These men live in 
log cabins in the wilderness. They do their hunting 
on foot, occasionally with the help of a single trailing- 
dog. In Maine they are as apt to kill moose and 
caribou as bear and deer; but elsewhere the two last, 
with an occasional cougar or wolf, are the beasts of 
chase which they follow. Nowadays as these old 
hunters die there is no one to take their places, though 
there are still plenty of backwoods settlers in all of the 
regions named who do a great deal of hunting and 
trapping. Such an old hunter rarely makes his ap- 
pearance at the settlements except to dispose of his 
peltry and hides in exchange for cartridges and pro- 
visions, and he leads a life of such lonely isolation as 
to insure his individual characteristics developing into 
peculiarities. Most of the wilder districts in the East- 
ern States still preserve memories of some such old 
hunter who lived his long life alone, waging ceaseless 
warfare on the vanishing game, whose oddities, as well 
as his courage, hardihood, and woodcraft, are laughingly 
remembered by the older settlers, and who is usually 
best known as having killed the last wolf or bear or 
cougar ever seen in the locality. 

Generally the weapon mainly relied on by these old 
hunters is the rifle; and occasionally some old hunter 

235 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

will be found even to this day who uses a muzzle- 
loader, such as Kit Carson carried in the middle of the 
century. There are exceptions to this rule of the rifle, 
however. In the years after the Civil War one of the 
many noted hunters of southwest Virginia and east 
Tennessee was Wilbur Waters, sometimes called The 
Hunter of White Top. He often killed black bear 
with a knife and dogs. He spent all his life in hunting 
and was very successful, killing the last gang of wolves 
to be found in his neighborhood; and he slew in- 
numerable bears, with no worse results to himself than 
an occasional bite or scratch. 

In the Southern States the planters living in the 
wilder regions have always been in the habit of following 
the black bear with horse and hound, many of them 
keeping regular packs of bearhounds. Such a pack 
includes not only pure-bred hounds, but also cross- 
bred animals, and some sharp, agile, hard-biting, fice 
dogs and terriers. They follow the bear and bring 
him to bay but do not try to kill him, although there 
are dogs of the big fighting breeds which can readily 
master a black bear if loosed at him three or four at 
a time; but the dogs of these Southern bearhound 
packs are not fitted for such work, and if they try to 
close with the bear he is certain to play havoc with them, 
disembowelling them with blows of his paws or seizing 
them in his arms and biting through their spines or 
legs. The riders follow the hounds through the cane- 
brakes, and also try to make cut-offs and station them- 
selves at open points where they think the bear will 
pass, so that they may get a shot at him. The weapons 
used are rifles, shotguns, and occasionally revolvers. 

Sometimes, however, the hunter uses the knife. Gen- 
eral Wade Hampton, who has probably killed more 

236 



THE BLACK BEAR 

black bears than any other man living in the United 
States, frequently used the knife, slaying thirty or 
forty with this weapon. His plan was, when he found 
that the dogs had the bear at bay, to walk up close 
and cheer them on. They would instantly seize the 
bear in a body, and he would then rush in and stab it 
behind the shoulder, reaching over so as to inflict 
the wound on the opposite side from that where he 
stood. He escaped scathless from all these encounters 
save one, in which he was rather severely torn in the 
forearm. Many other hunters have used the knife, 
but perhaps none so frequently as he; for he was always 
fond of steel, as witness his feats with the "white arm" 
during the Civil War. 

General Hampton always hunted with large packs of 
hounds, managed sometimes by himself and sometimes 
by his negro hunters. He occasionally took out forty 
dogs at a time. He found that all his dogs together 
could not kill a big fat bear, but they occasionally 
killed three-year-olds, or lean and poor bears. During 
the course of his life he has himself killed, or been in 
at the death of, five hundred bears, at least two-thirds 
of them falling by his own hand. In the year just 
before the war he had on one occasion, in Mississippi, 
killed sixty -eight bears in five months. Once he killed 
four bears in a day; at another time three, and fre- 
quently two. The two largest bears he himself killed 
weighed, respectively, 408 and 410 pounds. They were 
both shot in Mississippi. But he saw at least one bear 
killed which was much larger than either of these. 
These figures were taken down at the time, when the 
animals were actually weighed on the scales. Most of 
his hunting for bear was done in northern Mississippi, 
where one of his plantations was situated, near Green- 

237 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

ville. During the half-century that he hunted, on and 
off, in this neighborhood, he knew of two instances 
where hunters were fatally wounded in the chase of the 
black bear. Both of the men were inexperienced, one 
being a raftsman who came down the river, and the 
other a man from Vicksburg. He was not able to learn 
the particulars in the last case, but the raftsman came 
too close to a bear that was at bay, and it broke through 
the dogs, rushed at and overthrew him, then, lying on 
him, it bit him deeply in the thigh, through the femoral 
artery, so that he speedily bled to death. 

But a black bear is not usually a formidable opponent, 
and though he will sometimes charge home he is much 
more apt to bluster and bully than actually to come to 
close quarters. I myself have but once seen a man who 
had been hurt by one of these bears. This was an 
Indian. He had come on the beast close up in a thick 
wood, and had mortally wounded it with his gun; it 
had then closed with him, knocking the gun out of 
his hand, so that he was forced to use his knife. It 
charged him on all fours, but in the grapple, when it 
had failed to throw him down, it raised itself on its 
hind legs, clasping him across the shoulders with its 
fore paws. Apparently it had no intention of hugging 
but merely sought to draw him within reach of its 
jaws. He fought desperately against this, using the 
knife freely, and striving to keep its head back; and 
the flow of blood weakened the animal, so that it 
finally fell exhausted, before being able dangerously to 
injure him. But it had bitten his left arm very severely, 
and its claws had made long gashes on his shoulders. 

Black bears, like grizzlies, vary greatly in their modes 
of attack. Sometimes they rush in and bite; and again 
they strike with their fore paws. Two of my cowboys 

238 



THE BLACK BEAR 

were originally from Maine, where I knew them well. 
There they were fond of trapping bears, and caught 
a good many. The huge steel gins, attached by chains 
to heavy clogs, prevented the trapped beasts from going 
far; and when found they were always tied tight round 
some tree or bush, and usually nearly exhausted. The 
men killed them either with a little 32-caliber pistol or 
a hatchet. But once did they meet with any difficulty. 
On this occasion one of them incautiously approached 
a captured bear to knock it on the head with his hatchet, 
but the animal managed to partially untwist itself, 
and with its free forearm made a rapid sweep at him; 
he jumped back just in time, the bear's claws tearing 
his clothes — after which he shot it. Bears are shy and 
have very keen noses; they are therefore hard to kill 
by fair hunting, living, as they generally do, in dense 
forests or thick brush. They are easy enough to trap, 
however. Thus, these two men, though they trapped 
so many, never but once killed them in any other way. 
On this occasion one of them, in the winter, found 
in a great hollow log a den where a she and two well- 
grown cubs had taken up their abode, and shot all 
three with his rifle as they burst out. 

\Miere they are much hunted, bear become purely 
nocturnal; but in the wilder forests I have seen them 
abroad at all hours, though they do not much relish 
the intense heat of noon. They are rather comical 
animals to watch feeding and going about the ordinary 
business of their lives. Once I spent half an hour 
lying at the edge of a wood and looking at a black 
bear some three hundred yards off across an open glade. 
It was in good stalking country, but the wind was un- 
favorable and I waited for it to shift — waited too long 
as it proved, for something frightened the beast and 

239 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

he made off before I could get a shot at him. When I 
first saw him he was shuffling along and rooting in the 
ground, so that he looked like a great pig. Then he 
began to turn over the stones and logs to hunt for 
insects, small reptiles, and the like. A moderate-sized 
stone he would turn over with a single clap of his paw, 
and then plunge his nose down into the hollow to gobble 
up the small creatures beneath while still dazed by the 
light. The big logs and rocks he would tug and worry 
at with both paws; once, overexerting his clumsy 
strength, he lost his grip and rolled clean on his back. 
Under some of the logs he evidently found mice and 
chipmunks; then, as soon as the log was overturned, 
he would be seen jumping about with grotesque agility, 
and making quick dabs here and there, as the little 
scurrying rodent turned and twisted, until at last he 
put his paw on it and scooped it up into his mouth. 
Sometimes, probably when he smelt the mice under- 
neath, he would cautiously turn the log over with one 
paw, holding the other lifted and ready to strike. Now 
and then he would halt and sniff the air in every di- 
rection, and it was after one of these halts that he 
suddenly shuffled off into the woods. 

Black bear generally feed on berries, nuts, insects, 
carrion, and the like; but at times they take to killing 
very large animals. In fact, they are curiously irregular 
in their food. They will kill deer if they can get at 
them; but generally the deer are too quick. Sheep 
and hogs are their favorite prey, especially the latter, 
for bears seem to have a special relish for pork. Twice 
I have known a black bear kill cattle. Once the victim 
was a bull which had got mired, and which the bear 
deliberately proceeded to eat alive, heedless of the 
bellows of the unfortunate beast. On the other oc- 

240 



THE BLACK BEAR 

casion, a cow was surprised and slain among some 
bushes at the edge of a remote pasture. In the spring, 
soon after the long winter sleep, they are very hungry, 
and are especially apt to attack large beasts at this 
time; although during the very first days of their ap- 
pearance, when they are just breaking their fast, they 
eat rather sparingly, and by preference the tender 
shoots of green grass and other herbs, or frogs and 
crayfish; it is not for a week or two that they seem to 
be overcome by lean, ravenous hunger. They will 
even attack and master that formidable fighter the 
moose, springing at it from an ambush as it passes — 
for a bull moose would surely be an overmatch for one 
of them if fronted fairly in the open. An old hunter, 
whom I could trust, told me that he had seen in the 
snow in early spring the place where a bear had sprung 
at two moose, which were trotting together; he missed 
his spring, and the moose got off, their strides after 
they settled down into their pace being tremendous, 
and showing how thoroughly they were frightened. 
Another time he saw a bear chase a moose into a lake, 
where it waded out a little distance, and then turned 
to bay, bidding defiance to his pursuer, the latter not 
daring to approach in the water. I have been told — • 
but cannot vouch for it — that instances have been 
known where the bear, maddened by hunger, has gone 
in on a moose thus standing at bay, only to be beaten 
down under the water by the terrible fore hoofs of the 
quarry, and to yield its life in the contest. A lumber- 
man told me that he once saw a moose, evidently 
much startled, trot through a swamp, and immediately 
afterward a bear came up following the tracks. He 
almost ran into the man, and was evidently not in 
good temper, for he growled and blustered, and two 

241 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

or three times made feints of charging, before he finally 
concluded to go off. 

Bears will occasionally visit hunters* or lumbermen's 
camps, in the absence of the owners, and play sad 
havoc with all that therein is, devouring everything 
eatable, especially if sweet, and trampling into a dirty 
mess whatever they do not eat. The black bear does 
not average more than a third the size of the grizzly; 
but, like all its kind, it varies greatly in weight. The 
largest I myself ever saw weighed was in Maine, and 
tipped the scale at 346 pounds; but I have a perfectly 
authentic record of one in Maine that weighed 397, 
and my friend. Doctor Hart Merriam, tells me that 
he has seen several in the Adirondacks that when 
killed weighed about 350. 

I have myself shot but one or two black bears, and 
these were obtained under circumstances of no especial 
interest, as I merely stumbled on them while after 
other game, and killed them before they had a chance 
either to run or show fight. 



242 



XIV 

OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRIZZLY BEAR 

The king of the game beasts of temperate North 
America, because the most dangerous to the hunter, 
is the grizzly bear; known to the few remaining old- 
time trappers of the Rockies and the Great Plains, 
sometimes as "Old Ephraim" and sometimes as 
"Moccasin Joe" — the last in allusion to his queer, 
half-human footprints, which look as if made by some 
misshapen giant, walking in moccasins. 

Bear vary greatly in size and color, no less than in 
temper and habits. Old hunters speak much of them 
in their endless talks over the camp-fires and in the 
snow-bound winter huts. They insist on many species; 
not merely the black and the grizzly, but the brown, 
the cinnamon, the gray, the silver-tip, and others with 
names known only in certain localities, such as the 
range bear, the roach-back, and the smut-face. But 
in spite of popular opinion to the contrary, most old 
hunters are very untrustworthy in dealing with points 
of natural history. They usually know only so much 
about any given game animal as will enable them to 
kill it. They study its habits solely with this end in 
view; and once slain they only examine it to see about 
its condition and fur. With rare exceptions they are 
quite incapable of passing judgment upon questions of 
specific identity or difference. \Mien questioned, they 
not only advance perfectly impossible theories and facts 
in support of their views, but they rarely even agree as 
to the views themselves. One hunter will assert that the 
true grizzly is only found in California, heedless of the 

243 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

fact that the name was first used by Lewis and Clark as 
one of the titles they applied to the large bears of the 
plains country round the Upper Missouri, a quarter of 
a century before the California grizzly was known to 
fame. Another hunter will call any big brindled bear 
a grizzly no matter where it is found; and he and his 
companions will dispute by the hour as to whether a 
bear of large, but not extreme, size is a grizzly or a 
silver- tip. In Oregon the cinnamon-bear is a phase 
of the small black bear; in Montana it is the plains 
variety of the large mountain silver-tip. I have myself 
seen the skins of two bears killed on the upper waters 
of Tongue River; one was that of a male, one of a 
female, and they had evidently just mated; yet one 
was distinctly a "silver- tip" and the other a "cinna- 
mon." The skin of one very big bear which I killed 
in the Bighorn has proved a standing puzzle to almost 
all the old hunters to whom I have showed it; rarely 
do any two of them agree as to whether it is a grizzly, 
a silver-tip, a cinnamon, or a "smut-face." Any bear 
with unusually long hair on the spine and shoulders, 
especially if killed in the spring, when the fur is shaggy, 
is forthwith dubbed a "roach-back." The average 
sporting writer moreover joins with the more imagina- 
tive members of the "old hunter" variety in ascribing 
wildly various traits to these different bears. One 
comments on the superior prowess of the roach-back; 
the explanation being that a bear in early spring is 
apt to be ravenous from hunger. The next insists that 
the California grizzly is the only really dangerous bear; 
while another stoutly maintains that it does not com- 
pare in ferocity with what he calls the "smaller" 
silver-tip or cinnamon. And so on, and so on, without 
end. All of which is mere nonsense. 

244 



OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRIZZLY BEAR 

Nevertheless, it is no easy task to determine how 
many species or varieties of bear actually do exist in 
the United States, and I cannot even say without doubt 
that a very large set of skins and skulls would not 
show a nearly complete intergradation between the 
most widely separated individuals. However, there 
are certainly two very distinct types, which differ al- 
most as widely from each other as a wapiti does from 
a mule-deer, and which exist in the same localities in 
most heavily timbered portions of the Rockies. One 
is the small black bear, a bear which will average 
about 200 pounds' weight, with fine, glossy, black 
fur, and the fore claws but little longer than the 
hinder ones; in fact the hairs of the fore paw often 
reach to their tips. This bear is a tree-climber. It 
is the only kind found east of the great plains, and it 
is also plentiful in the forest-clad portions of the 
Rockies, being common in most heavily timbered tracts 
throughout the United States. The other is the grizzly, 
which weighs three or four times as much as the black, 
and has a pelt of coarse hair, which is in color gray, 
grizzled, or brown of various shades. It is not a tree- 
climber, and the fore claws are very long, much longer 
than the hinder ones. It is found from the great plains 
west of the Mississippi to the Pacific coast. This bear 
inhabits indifferently the lowland and mountain; the 
deep woods, and the barren plains where the only 
cover is the stunted growth fringing the streams. 
These two types are very distinct in every way, and 
their differences are not at all dependent upon mere 
geographical considerations; for they are often found 
in the same district. Thus I found them both in the 
Bighorn Mountains, each type being in extreme form, 
while the specimens I shot showed no trace of inter- 

245 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

gradation. The huge grizzled, long-clawed beast, and 
its little glossy -coated, short-clawed, tree-climbing 
brother roamed over exactly the same country in those 
mountains; but they were as distinct in habits and 
mixed as little together as moose and caribou. 

On the other hand, when a sufficient number of 
bears, from widely separated regions, are examined, 
the various distinguishing marks are found to be in- 
constant and to show a tendency — exactly how strong 
I cannot say — to fade into one another. The differ- 
entiation of the two Species seems to be as yet scarcely 
completed; there are more or less imperfect connect- 
ing-links, and as regards the grizzly it almost seems 
as if the specific characters were still unstable. In 
the far Northwest, in the basin of the Columbia, the 
"black" bear is as often brown as any other color; and 
I have seen the skins of two cubs, one black and one 
brown, which were shot when following the same dam. 
When these brown bears have coarser hair than usual 
their skins are with difficulty to be distinguished from 
those of certain varieties of the grizzly. Moreover, all 
bears vary greatly in size; and I have seen the bodies 
of very large black or brown bears with short fore 
claws which were fully as heavy as, or perhaps heavier 
than, some small but full-grown grizzlies with long fore 
claws. These very large bears with short claws are very 
reluctant to climb a tree; and are almost as clumsy 
about it as is a young grizzly. Among the grizzlies 
the fur varies much in color and texture even among 
bears of the same locality ; it is of course richest in the 
deep forest, while the bears of the dry plains and 
mountains are of a lighter, more washed-out hue. 

A full-grown grizzly will usually weigh from five 
to seven hundred pounds; but exceptional individuals 

246 



OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRIZZLY BEAR 

undoubtedly reach more than twelve hundredweight. 
The California bears are said to be much the largest. 
This I think is so, but I cannot say it with certainty — 
at any rate I have examined several skins of full-grown 
California bears which were no larger than those of 
many I have seen from the northern Rockies. The 
Alaskan bears, particularly those of the peninsula, are 
even bigger beasts ; the skin of one which I saw in the 
possession of Mr. Webster, the taxidermist, was a good 
deal larger than the average polar-bear skin ; and the ani- 
mal when alive, if in good condition, could hardly have 
weighed less than 1,400 pounds.* Bears vary wonder- 
fully in weight, even to the extent of becoming half as 
heavy again, according as they are fat or lean; in this re- 
spect they are more like hogs than like any other animals. 
The grizzly is now chiefly a beast of the high hills 
and heavy timber; but this is merely because he has 
learned that he must rely on cover to guard him from 
man, and has forsaken the open ground accordingly. 
In old days, and in one or two very out-of-the-way 
places almost to the present time, he wandered at will 
over the plains. It is only the wariness born of fear 
which nowadays causes him to cling to the thick brush 
of the large river-bottoms throughout the plains coun- 
try. When there were no rifle-bearing hunters in the 
land, to harass him and make him afraid, he roved 
hither and thither at will, in burly self-confidence. 
Then he cared little for cover, unless as a weather- 
break, or because it happened to contain food he liked. 
If the humor seized him he would roam for days over 
the rolling or broken prairie, searching for roots, dig- 
ging up gophers, or perhaps following the great buffalo- 

* Both this huge Alaskan bear and the entirely distinct bear of the barren 
grounds differ widely from the true grizzly, at least in their extreme forms. 

247 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

herds either to prey on some unwary straggler which he 
was able to catch at a disadvantage in a washout, or 
else to feast on the carcasses of those which died by 
accident. Old hunters, survivors of the long-vanished 
ages when the vast herds thronged the high plains and 
were followed by the wild red tribes, and by bands of 
whites who were scarcely less savage, have told me 
that they often met bears under such circumstances; 
and these bears were accustomed to sleep in a patch of 
rank sage-brush, in the niche of a washout, or under 
the lee of a boulder, seeking their food abroad even in 
full daylight. The bears of the Upper Missouri basin 
^which were so light in color that the early explorers 
often alluded to them as gray or even as "white" — 
were particularly given to this life in the open. To 
this day that close kinsman of the grizzly known as the 
bear of the barren grounds continues to lead this same 
kind of life, in the far North. My friend Mr. Rockhill, 
of Maryland, who was the first white man to explore 
eastern Tibet, describes the large, grizzly-like bear of 
those desolate uplands as having similar habits. 

However, the grizzly is a shrewd beast and shows 
the usual bear-like capacity for adapting himself to 
changed conditions. He has in most places become a 
cover-haunting animal, sly in his ways, wary to a de- 
gree, and clinging to the shelter of the deepest forests in 
the mountains and of the most tangled thickets in the 
plains. Hence he has held his own far better than such 
game as the bison and elk. He is much less common 
than formerly, but he is still to be found throughout 
most of his former range; save of course in the im- 
mediate neighborhood of the large towns. 

In most places the grizzly hibernates, or, as old hunt- 
ers say, "holes up," during the cold season, precisely as 

248 



OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRIZZLY BEAR 

does the black bear; but, as with the latter species, 
those animals which live farthest south spend the whole 
year abroad in mild seasons. The grizzly rarely chooses 
that favorite den of his little black brother, a hollow 
tree or log, for his winter sleep, seeking or making 
some cavernous hole in the ground instead. The hole 
is sometimes in a slight hillock in a river-bottom, but 
more often on a hillside, and may be either shallow or 
deep. In the mountains it is generally a natural cave 
in the rock, but among the foot-hills and on the plains 
the bear usually has to take some hollow or opening, 
and then fashion it into a burrow to his liking with his 
big digging claws. 

Before the cold weather sets in the bear begins to 
grow restless, and to roam about seeking for a good 
place in which to hole up. One will often try and aban- 
don several caves or partially dug-out burrows in suc- 
cession before finding a place to its taste. It always 
endeavors to choose a spot where there is little chance 
of discovery or molestation, taking great care to avoid 
leaving too evident trace of its work. Hence it is not 
often that the dens are found. 

Once in its den the bear passes the cold months in 
lethargic sleep ; yet, in all but the coldest weather, and 
sometimes even then, its slumber is but light, and if 
disturbed it will promptly leave its den, prepared 
for fight or flight as the occasion may require. Many 
times when a hunter has stumbled on the winter resting- 
place of a bear and has left it, as he thought, without 
his presence being discovered, he has returned only to 
find that the crafty old fellow was aware of the danger 
all the time, and sneaked off as soon as the coast was 
clear. But in very cold weather hibernating bears 
can hardly be wakened from their torpid lethargy. 

249 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

The length of time a bear stays in its den depends 
of course upon the severity of the season and the lati- 
tude and altitude of the country. In the northernmost 
and coldest regions all the bears hole up, and spend 
half the year in a state of lethargy; whereas in the 
South only the shes with young and the fat he bears 
retire for the sleep, and these but for a few weeks, and 
only if the season is severe. 

When the bear first leaves its den the fur is in very 
fine order, but it speedily becomes thin and poor, and 
does not recover its condition until the fall. Sometimes 
the bear does not betray any great hunger for a few 
days after its appearance; but in a short while it be- 
comes ravenous. During the early spring, when the 
woods are still entirely barren and lifeless, while the 
snow yet lies in deep drifts, the lean, hungry brute, both 
maddened and weakened by long fasting, is more of a 
flesh-eater than at any other time. It is at this period 
that it is most apt to turn true beast of prey, and show 
its prowess either at the expense of the wild game, or 
of the flocks of the settler and the herds of the ranch- 
man. Bears are very capricious in this respect, how- 
ever. Some are confirmed game and cattle killers; 
others are not; while yet others either are or are not, 
accordingly as the freak seizes them, and their ravages 
vary almost unaccountably, both with the season and 
the locality. 

Throughout 1889, for instance, no cattle, so far as 
I heard, were killed by bears anywhere near my range 
on the Little Missouri in western Dakota; yet I 
happened to know that during that same season the 
ravages of the bears among the herds of the cowmen in 
the Big Hole Basin, in western Montana, were very 
destructive. 

250 



OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRIZZLY BEAR 

In the spring and early summer of 1888, the bears 
killed no cattle near my ranch; but in the late summer 
and early fall of that year a big bear, which we well 
knew by its tracks, suddenly took to cattle-killing. 
This was a brute which had its headquarters on some 
very large brush bottoms a dozen miles below my ranch- 
house, and which ranged to and fro across the broken 
country flanking the river on each side. It began just 
before berry time, but continued its career of destruction 
long after the wild plums and even buffalo-berries had 
ripened. I think that what started it was a feast on a 
cow which had mired and died in the bed of the creek; 
at least it was not until after we found that it had been 
feeding at the carcass and had eaten every scrap that 
we discovered traces of its ravages among the live stock. 
It seemed to attack the animals wholly regardless of 
their size and strength; its victims including a large 
bull and a beef steer, as well as cows, yearlings, and 
gaunt, weak trail "doughgies," which had been brought 
in very late by a Texas cow outfit — for that year several 
herds were driven up from the overstocked, ea ten-out, 
and drought-stricken ranges of the far South. Judging 
from the signs, the crafty old grizzly, as cunning as he 
was ferocious, usually lay in wait for the cattle when 
they came down to water, choosing some thicket of 
dense underbrush and twisted cottonwoods through 
which they had to pass before reaching the sand-banks 
on the river's brink. Sometimes he pounced on them 
as they fed through the thick, low cover of the bottoms, 
where an assailant could either lie in ambush by one 
of the numerous cattle-trails, or else creep unobserved 
toward some browsing beast. When within a few feet 
a quick rush carried him fairly on the terrified quarry; 
and though but a clumsy animal compared to the 

251 






THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

great cats, the grizzly is far quicker than one would 
imagine from viewing his ordinary lumbering gait. In 
one or two instances the bear had apparently grappled 
with his victim by seizing it near the loins and striking 
a disabhng blow over the small of the back; in at least 
one instance he had jumped on the animal's head, 
grasping it with his fore paws, while with his fangs 
he tore open the throat or craunched the neck-bone. 
Some of his victims were slain far from the river, in 
winding, brushy coulees of the Bad Lands, where the 
broken nature of the ground rendered stalking easy. 
Several of the ranchmen, angered at their losses, 
hunted their foe eagerly, but always with ill success; 
until one of them put poison in a carcass, and thus at 
last, in ignoble fashion, slew the cattle-killer. 

Mr. Clarence King informs me that he was once eye- 
witness to a bear's killing a steer, in California. The 
steer was in a small pasture, and the bear climbed over, 
partly breaking down the rails which barred the gate- 
way. The steer started to run, but the grizzly overtook 
it in four or five bounds, and struck it a tremendous 
blow on the flank with one paw, knocking several ribs 
clear away from the spine, and killing the animal out- 
right by the shock. 

Horses no less than horned cattle at times fall victims 
to this great bear, which usually springs on them from 
the edge of a clearing as they graze in some mountain 
pasture, or among the foot-hills; and there is no other 
animal of which horses seem so much afraid. Generally 
the bear, whether successful or unsuccessful in its raids 
on cattle and horses, comes off unscathed from the 
struggle; but this is not always the case, and it has 
much respect for the hoofs or horns of its should-be 
prey. Some horses do not seem to know how to fight 

252 



OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRIZZLY BEAR 

it at all; but others are both quick and vicious, and 
prove themselves very formidable foes, lashing out 
behind, and striking with their fore hoofs. I have else- 
where given an instance of a stallion which beat off a 
bear, breaking its jaw. 

Quite near my ranch, once, a cowboy in my employ 
found unmistakable evidence of the discomfiture of a 
bear by a long-horned range cow. It was in the early 
spring, and the cow with her new-born calf was in a 
brush-bordered valley. The footprints in the damp 
soil were very plain, and showed all that had happened. 
The bear had evidently come out of the bushes with a 
rush, probably bent merely on seizing the calf; and 
had slowed up when the cow, instead of flying, faced 
him. He had then begun to walk round his expected 
dinner in a circle, the cow fronting him and moving 
nervously back and forth, so that her sharp hoofs cut 
and trampled the ground. Finally she had charged 
savagely; whereupon the bear had bolted; and, whether 
frightened at the charge, or at the approach of some 
one, he had not returned. 

The grizzly is even fonder of sheep and pigs than is 
its smaller black brother. Lurking round the settler's 
house until after nightfall, it will vault into the fold or 
sty, grasp a helpless, bleating fleece-bearer, or a shriek- 
ing, struggling member of the bristly brotherhood, and 
bundle it out over the fence to its death. In carrying 
its prey a bear sometimes holds the body in its teeth, 
walking along on all fours and dragging it as a wolf 
does. Sometimes, however, it seizes an animal in its 
forearms or in one of them, and walks awkwardly on 
three legs or two, adopting this method in lifting and 
pushing the body over rocks and down timber. 

When a grizzly can get at domestic animals it rarely 

253 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

seeks to molest game, the former being far less wary 
and more helpless. Its heaviness and clumsiness do 
not fit it well for a life of rapine against shy woodland 
creatures. Its vast strength and determined temper, 
however, more than make amends for lack of agility 
in the actual struggle with the stricken prey; its dijQS- 
culty lies in seizing, not in killing, the game. Hence, 
when a grizzly does take to game-killing, it is likely to 
attack bison, moose, and elk; it is rarely able to catch 
deer, still less sheep or antelope. In fact these smaller 
game animals often show but little dread of its neigh- 
borhood, and, though careful not to let it come too 
near, go on grazing when a bear is in full sight. White- 
tail deer are frequently found at home in the same 
thicket in which a bear has its den, while they im- 
mediately desert the temporary abiding-place of a 
wolf or cougar. Nevertheless, they sometimes presume 
too much on this confidence. A couple of years before 
the occurrence of the feats of cattle-killing mentioned 
above as happening near my ranch, either the same 
bear that figured in them, or another of similar tastes, 
took to game-hunting. The beast lived in the same 
succession of huge thickets which cover for two or three 
miles the river-bottoms and the mouths of the inflowing 
creeks; and he suddenly made a raid on the whitetail 
deer which were plentiful in the dense cover. The 
shaggy, clumsy monster was cunning enough to kill 
several of these knowing creatures. The exact course 
of procedure I never could find out; but apparently 
the bear lay in wait beside the game trails, along which 
the deer wandered. 

In the old days when the innumerable bison grazed 
free on the prairie, the grizzly sometimes harassed their 
bands as it now does the herds of the ranchman. The 

254 



OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRIZZLY BEAR 

bison was the most easily approached of all game, and 
the great bear could often get near some outlying 
straggler, in its quest after stray cows, yearlings, or 
calves. In default of a favorable chance to make a 
prey of one of these weaker members of the herds, it 
did not hesitate to attack the mighty bulls themselves; 
and perhaps the grandest sight which it was ever the 
good fortune of the early hunters to witness was one 
of these rare battles between a hungry grizzly and a 
powerful buffalo bull. Nowadays, however, the few 
last survivors of the bison are vanishing even from the 
inaccessible mountain fastnesses in which they sought 
a final refuge from their destroyers. 

At present the wapiti is of all wild game that which 
is most likely to fall a victim to the grizzly, when the 
big bear is in the mood to turn hunter. Wapiti are 
found in the same places as the grizzly, and in some 
spots they are yet very plentiful; they are less shy and 
active than deer, while not powerful enough to beat 
off so ponderous a foe; and they live in cover where 
there is always a good chance either to stalk or to 
stumble on them. At almost any season bear will come 
and feast on an elk carcass; and if the food-supply runs 
short, in early spring, or in a fall when the berry-crop 
falls, they sometimes have to do their own killing. 
Twice I have come across the remains of elk, which had 
seemingly been slain and devoured by bears. I have 
never heard of elk making a fight against a bear; yet, 
at close quarters and at bay, a bull elk in the rutting 
season is an ugly foe. 

A bull moose is even more formidable, being able 
to strike the most lightning-like blows with his terrible 
fore feet, his true weapons of defense. I doubt if any 
beast of prey would rush in on one of these woodland 

255 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

giants, when his horns were grown, and if he was on 
his guard and bent on fight. Nevertheless, the moose 
sometimes fall victims to the uncouth prowess of the 
grizzly, in the thick wet forests of the high northern 
Rockies, where both beasts dwell. An old hunter who 
a dozen years ago wintered at Jackson Lake, in north- 
western Wyoming, told me that when the snows got 
deep on the mountains the moose came down and took 
up their abode near the lake, on its western side. 
Nothing molested them during the winter. Early in 
the spring a grizzly came out of its den, and he found 
its tracks in many places, as it roamed restlessly about, 
evidently very hungry. Finding little to eat in the 
bleak, snow-drifted w^oods, it soon began to depredate 
the moose, and killed two or three, generally by lying 
in wait and dashing out on them as they passed near 
its lurking-place. Even the bulls were at that season 
weak, and of course hornless, with small desire to fight; 
and in each case the rush of the great bear — doubtless 
made with the ferocity and speed which so often belie 
the seeming awkwardness of the animal — bore down 
the startled victim, taken utterly unawares before it 
had a chance to defend itself. In one case the bear 
had missed its spring; the moose going off, for a few 
rods, with huge jumps, and then settling down into its 
characteristic trot. The old hunter who followed the 
tracks said he would never have deemed it possible for 
any animal to make such strides while in a trot. 

Nevertheless, the grizzly is only occasionally, not 
normally, a formidable predatory beast, a killer of 
cattle and of large game. Although capable of far 
swifter movement than is promised by his frame of 
seemingly clumsy strength, and in spite of his power of 
charging with astonishing suddenness and speed, he 

^5Q 



OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRIZZLY BEAR 

yet lacks altogether the supple agility of such finished 
destroyers as the cougar and the wolf; and for the 
absence of this quality no amount of mere huge muscle 
can atone. He is more apt to feast on animals which 
have met their death by accident, or which have been 
killed by other beasts or by man, than to do his own 
killing. He is a very foul feeder, with a strong relish 
for carrion, and possesses a gruesome and cannibal 
fondness for the flesh of his own kind; a bear carcass 
will toll a brother bear to the ambushed hunter better 
than almost any other bait, unless it is the carcass of 
a horse. 

Nor do these big bears always content themselves 
merely with the carcasses of their brethren. A black 
bear would have a poor chance if in the clutches of a 
large, hungry grizzly; and an old male will kill and eat 
a cub, especially if he finds it at a disadvantage. A 
rather remarkable instance of this occurred in Yellow- 
stone National Park, in the spring of 1891. The in- 
cident is related in the following letter written to Mr. 
William Hallett Phillips, of Washington, by another 
friend, Mr. Elwood Hofer. Hofer is an old mountain- 
man; I have hunted with him myself, and know his 
statements to be trustworthy. He was, at the time, 
at work in the Park getting animals for the National 
Museum at Washington, and was staying at Yancey's 
"hotel" near Tower Falls. His letter, which was 
dated June 21, 1891, runs in part as follows: 

"I had a splendid Grizzly or Roachback cub and 
was going to send him into the Springs next morning 
the team was here, I heard a racket outside went out 
and found him dead an old bear that made an 9}4 
inch track had killed and partly eaten him. Last night 
another one came, one that made an 83^ inch track, 

257 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

and broke Yancy up in the milk business. You know 
how the cabins stand here. There is a hitching-post 
between the saloon and old house, the little bear was 
killed there. In a creek close by was a milk house, 
last night another bear came there and smashed the 
whole thing up, leaving nothing but a few flattened 
buckets and pans and boards. I was sleeping in the 
old cabin, I heard the tin ware rattle but thought it 
was all right supposed it was cows or horses about. 
I don't care about the milk but the damn cuss dug up 
the remains of the cub I had buried in the old ditch, 
he visited the old meat house but found nothing. 
Bear are very thick in this part of the Park, and are 
getting very fresh. I sent in the game to Capt. Ander- 
son, hear its doing well." 

Grizzlies are fond of fish; and on the Pacific slope, 
where the salmon run, they, like so many other beasts, 
travel many scores of miles and crowd down to the 
rivers to gorge themselves upon the fish which are 
thrown up on the banks. Wading into the water, a 
bear will knock out the salmon right and left when 
they are running thick. 

Flesh and fish do not constitute the grizzly's ordinary 
diet. At most times the big bear is a grubber in the 
ground, an eater of insects, roots, nuts, and berries. 
Its dangerous fore claws are normally used to overturn 
stones and knock rotten logs to pieces, that it may lap 
up the small tribes of darkness which swarm under the 
one and in the other. It digs up the camas roots, wild 
onions, and an occasional luckless woodchuck or gopher. 
If food is very plenty bears are lazy, but commonly 
they are obliged to be very industrious, it being no 
light task to gather enough ants, beetles, crickets, 
tumble-bugs, roots, and nuts to satisfy the cravings of 

258 



OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRIZZLY BEAR 

so huge a bulk. The sign of a bear's work is, of course, 
evident to the most unpractised eye; and in no way- 
can one get a better idea of the brute's power than by 
watching it busily working for its breakfast, shattering 
big logs and upsetting boulders by sheer strength. 
There is always a touch of the comic, as well as a 
touch of the strong and terrible, in a bear's look and 
actions. It will tug and pull, now with one paw, now 
with two, now on all fours, now on its hind legs, in the 
effort to turn over a large log or stone; and when it 
succeeds it jumps round to thrust its muzzle into the 
damp hollow and lap up the affrighted mice or beetles 
while they are still paralyzed by the sudden exposure. 

The true time of plenty for bears is the berry season. 
Then they feast ravenously on huckleberries, blue- 
berries, kinnikinic-berries, buffalo-berries, wild plums, 
elderberries, and scores of other fruits. They often 
smash all the bushes in a berry-patch, gathering the 
fruit with half-luxurious, half-laborious greed, sitting 
on their haunches, and sweeping the berries into their 
mouths with dexterous paws. So absorbed do they 
become in their feasts on the luscious fruit that they 
grow reckless of their safety, and feed in broad day- 
light, almost at midday; while in some of the thickets, 
especially those of the mountain haws, they make so 
much noise in smashing the branches that it is a com- 
paratively easy matter to approach them unheard. 
That still-hunter is in luck who in the fall finds an 
accessible berry-covered hillside which is haunted by 
bears; but, as a rule, the berry bushes do not grow 
close enough together to give the hunter much chance. 

Like most other wild animals, bears which have 
known the neighborhood of man are beasts of the dark- 
ness, or at least of the dusk and the gloaming. But 

259 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

they are by no means such true night-lovers as the 
big cats and the wolves. In regions where they know 
little of hunters they roam about freely in the daylight, 
and in cool weather are even apt to take their noontide 
slumbers basking in the sun. Where they are much 
hunted they finally almost reverse their natural habits 
and sleep throughout the hours of light, only venturing 
abroad after nightfall and before sunrise; but even 
yet this is not the habit of those bears which exist in 
the wilder localities where they are still plentiful. In 
these places they sleep, or at least rest, during the hours 
of greatest heat, and again in the middle part of the 
night, unless there is a full moon. They start on their 
rambles for food about mid-afternoon, and end their 
morning roaming soon after the sun is above the 
horizon. If the moon is full, however, they may feed 
all night long, and then wander but little in the day- 
time. 

Aside from man, the full-grown grizzly has hardly 
any foe to fear. Nevertheless, in the early spring, 
when weakened by the hunger that succeeds the winter 
sleep, it behooves even the grizzly, if he dwells in the 
mountain fastnesses of the far Northwest, to beware 
of a famished troop of great timber-wolves. These 
northern Rocky Mountain wolves are most formidable 
beasts, and when many of them band together in time 
of famine they do not hesitate to pounce on the black 
bear and cougar; and even a full-grown grizzly is not 
safe from their attacks, unless he can back up against 
some rock which will prevent them from assailing him 
from behind. A small ranchman whom I knew well, 
who lived near Flathead Lake, once in April found 
where a troop of these wolves had killed a good-sized 
yearling grizzly. Either cougar or wolf will make a prey 

260 



OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRIZZLY BEAR 

of a grizzly which is but a few months old; while any 
fox, lynx, wolverene, or fisher will seize the very young 
cubs. The old story about wolves fearing to feast on 
game killed by a grizzly is all nonsense. Wolves are 
canny beasts, and they will not approach a carcass if 
they think a bear is hidden near by and likely to 
rush out at them; but under ordinary circumstances 
they will feast not only on the carcasses of the grizzly's 
victims, but on the carcass of the grizzly himself after 
he has been slain and left by the hunter. Of course 
wolves would only attack a grizzly if in the most desper- 
ate straits for food, as even a victory over such an 
antagonist must be purchased with heavy loss of life; 
and a hungry grizzly would devour either a wolf or a 
cougar, or any one of the smaller carnivora offhand, 
if it happened to corner it where it could not get away. 
The grizzly occasionally makes its den in a cave and 
spends therein the midday hours. But this is rare. 
Usually it lies in the dense shelter of the most tangled 
piece of woods in the neighborhood, choosing by prefer- 
ence some bit where the young growth is thick and 
the ground strewn with boulders and fallen logs. Often, 
especially if in a restless mood and roaming much over 
the country, it merely makes a temporary bed, in 
which it lies but once or twice; and again it may make 
a more permanent lair or series of lairs, spending many 
consecutive nights in each. Usually the lair or bed is 
made some distance from the feeding-ground; but bold 
bears, in very wild localities, may lie close by a carcass, 
or in the middle of a berry ground. The deer-killing 
bear above mentioned had evidently dragged two or 
three of his victims to his den, which was under an 
impenetrable mat of buUberries and dwarf box-alders, 
hemmed in by a cut bank on one side and a wall of 

261 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

gnarled cottonwoods on the other. Round this den, 
and rendering it noisome, were scattered the bones of 
several deer and a young steer or heifer. When we 
found it we thought we could easily kill the bear, but 
the fierce, cunning beast must have seen or smelt us, 
for though we lay in wait for it long and patiently, it 
did not come back to its place; nor, on our subsequent 
visits, did we ever find traces of its having done so. 

Bear are fond of wallowing in the water, whether in 
the sand, on the edge of a rapid plains river, on the 
muddy margin of a pond, or in the oozy moss of a 
clear, cold mountain spring. One hot August after- 
noon, as I was clambering down a steep mountainside 
near Pend' Oreille Lake, I heard a crash some distance 
below, which showed that a large beast was afoot. 
On making my way toward the spot, I found I had 
disturbed a big bear as it was lolling at ease in its bath; 
the discolored water showed where it had scrambled 
hastily out and galloped off as I approached. The 
spring welled out at the base of a high granite rock, 
forming a small pool of shimmering broken crystal. 
The soaked moss lay in a deep wet cushion round about, 
and jutted over the edges of the pool like a floating 
shelf. Graceful, water-loving ferns swayed to and fro. 
Above, the great conifers spread their murmuring 
branches, dimming the light, and keeping out the heat; 
their brown boles sprang from the ground like buttressed 
columns. On the barren mountainside beyond, the 
heat was oppressive. It was small wonder that Bruin 
should have sought the spot to cool his gross carcass 
in the fresh spring water. 

The bear is a solitary beast, and although many 
may assemble together, in what looks like a drove, on 
some favorite feeding-ground — usually where the ber- 

262 



OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRIZZLY BEAR 

ries are thick, or by the banks of a salmon-thronged 
river — the association is never more than momentary, 
each going its own way as soon as its hunger is satisfied. 
The males always live alone by choice, save in the rut- 
ting season, when they seek the females. Then two 
or three may come together in the course of their pur- 
suit and rough courtship of the female; and if the rivals 
are well matched, savage battles follow, so that many 
of the old males have their heads seamed with scars 
made by their fellows* teeth. At such times they are 
evil-tempered and prone to attack man or beast upon 
the slightest provocation. 

The she brings forth her cubs, one, two, or three in 
number, in her winter den. They are very small and 
helpless things, and it is some time after she leaves her 
winter home before they can follow her for any distance. 
They stay with her throughout the summer and the 
fall, leaving her when the cold weather sets in. By 
this time they are well grown; and hence, especially 
if an old male has joined the she, the family may 
number three or four individuals, so as to make what 
seems like quite a little troop of bears. A small ranch- 
man who lived a dozen miles from me on the Little 
Missouri once found a she bear and three half-grown 
cubs feeding at a berry-patch in a ravine. He shot 
the old she in the small of the back, whereat she made 
a loud roaring and squealing. One of the cubs rushed 
toward her; but its sympathy proved misplaced, for 
she knocked it over with a hearty cuff, either out of 
mere temper, or because she thought her pain must 
be due to an unprovoked assault from one of her off- 
spring. The hunter then killed one of the cubs, and 
the other two escaped. When bears are together and 
one is wounded by a bullet, but does not see the real 

263 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

assailant, it often falls tooth and nail upon its comrade, 
apparently attributing its injury to the latter. 

Bears are hunted in many ways. Some are killed 
by poison; but this plan is only practised by the 
owners of cattle or sheep who have suffered from their 
ravages. Moreover, they are harder to poison than 
wolves. Most often they are killed in traps, which 
are sometimes deadfalls, on the principle of the little 
figure-4 trap familiar to every American country boy, 
sometimes log pens in which the animal is taken alive, 
but generally huge steel gins. In some States there is 
a bounty for the destruction of grizzlies; and in many 
places their skins have a market price, although much 
less valuable than those of the black bear. The men 
who pursue them for the bounty or for their fur, as 
well as the ranchmen who regard them as foes to stock, 
ordinarily use steel traps. The trap is very massive, 
needing no small strength to set, and it is usually 
chained to a bar or log of wood, which does not stop 
the bear's progress outright, but hampers and interferes 
with it, continually catching in tree stumps and the 
like. The animal when trapped makes off at once, 
biting at the trap and the bar; but it leaves a broad 
wake and sooner or later is found tangled up by the 
chain and bar. A bear is by no means so difficult to 
trap as a wolf or fox, although more so than a cougar or 
a lynx. In wild regions a skilful trapper can often catch 
a great many with comparative ease. A cunning old 
grizzly, however, soon learns the danger, and is then 
almost impossible to trap, as it either avoids the 
neighborhood altogether or finds out some way by 
which to get at the bait without springing the trap, 
or else deliberately springs it first. I have been told 
of bears which spring traps by rolling across them, 

264 



OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRIZZLY BEAR 

the iron jaws slipping harmlessly off the big round 
body. An old horse is the most common bait. 

It is, of course, all right to trap bears when they are 
followed merely as vermin or for the sake of the fur. 
Occasionally, however, hunters who are out merely for 
sport adopt this method; but this should never be done. 
To shoot a trapped bear for sport is a thoroughly 
unsportsmanlike proceeding. A funny plea some- 
times advanced in its favor is that it is "dangerous." 
No doubt in exceptional instances this is true; exactly 
as it is true that in exceptional instances it is "danger- 
ous " for a butcher to knock over a steer in the slaughter- 
house. A bear caught only by the toes may wrench 
itself free as the hunter comes near, and attack him 
with pain-maddened fury; or if followed at once, and 
if the trap and bar are light, it may be found in some 
thicket, still free, and in a frenzy of rage. But even 
in such cases the beast has been crippled, and though 
crazy with pain and anger is easily dealt with by a 
good shot; while ordinarily the poor brute is found 
in the last stages of exhaustion, tied tight to a tree 
where the log or bar has caught, its teeth broken to 
splintered stumps by rabid snaps at the cruel trap and 
chain. Some trappers kill the trapped grizzlies with a 
revolver; so that it may easily be seen that the sport 
is not normally dangerous. Two of my own cowboys, 
Seawell and Dow, were originally from Maine, where 
they had trapped a number of black bears; and they 
always killed them either with a hatchet or a small 
32-caliber revolver. One of them, Seawell, once came 
near being mauled by a trapped bear, seemingly at 
the last gasp, which he had approached most incau- 
tiously with his hatchet. 

There is, however, one very real danger to which 

2Q5 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the solitary bear-trapper is exposed, the danger of 
being caught in his own trap. The huge jaws of the 
gin are easy to spring and most hard to open. If an 
unwary passer-by should tread between them and be 
caught by the leg, his fate would be doubtful, though 
he would probably die under the steadily growing 
torment of the merciless iron jaws, as they pressed 
ever deeper into the sore flesh and broken bones. 
But if caught by the arms, while setting or fixing the 
trap, his fate would be in no doubt at all, for it would 
be impossible for the stoutest man to free himself by 
any means. Terrible stories are told of solitary moun- 
tain hunters who disappeared, and were found years 
later in the lonely wilderness, as mouldering skeletons, 
the shattered bones of the forearms still held in the 
rusty jaws of the gin. 

Doubtless the grizzly could be successfully hunted 
with dogs, if the latter were carefully bred and trained 
to the purpose, but as yet this has not been done, and 
though dogs are sometimes used as adjuncts in grizzly- 
hunting they are rarely of much service. It is some- 
times said that very small dogs are the best for this 
end. But this is only so with grizzlies that have never 
been hunted. In such a case the big bear sometimes 
becomes so irritated with the bouncing, yapping little 
terriers or fice dogs that he may try to catch them 
and thus permit the hunter to creep up on him. But 
the minute he realizes, as he speedily does, that the 
man is his real foe, he pays no further heed whatever 
to the little dogs, who can then neither bring him to 
bay nor hinder his flight. Ordinary hounds, of the 
kinds used in the South for fox, deer, wildcat, and 
black bear, are but little better. I have known one 
or two men who at different times tried to hunt the 

266 



OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRIZZLY BEAR 

grizzly with a pack of hounds and fice dogs wonted to the 
chase of the black bear, but they never met with success. 
This was probably largely owing to the nature of the 
country in which they hunted, a vast tangled mass 
of forest and craggy mountain; but it was also due 
to the utter inability of the dogs to stop the quarry 
from breaking bay when it wished. Several times a 
grizzly was bayed, but always in some inaccessible spot 
which it took hard climbing to reach, and the dogs 
were never able to hold the beast until the hunters 
came up. 

Still a well-trained pack of large hounds which were 
both bold and cunning could doubtless bay even a 
grizzly. Such dogs are the big half-breed hounds some- 
times used in the AUeghanies of West Virginia, which 
are trained not merely to nip a bear, but to grip him 
by the hock as he runs and either throw him or twirl 
him round. A grizzly could not disregard a wary and 
powerful hound capable of performing this trick, even 
though he paid small heed to mere barking and oc- 
casional nipping. Nor do I doubt that it would be 
possible to get together a pack of many large fierce dogs, 
trained to dash straight at the head and hold on like 
a vice, which could fairly master a grizzly and, though 
unable, of course, to kill him, would worry him breath- 
less and hold him down so that he could be slain with 
ease. There have been instances in which five or six 
of the big so-called bloodhounds of the Southern States 
— not pure bloodhounds at all, but huge, fierce, ban- 
dogs, with a cross of the ferocious Cuban bloodhound, 
to give them good scenting powers — have by them- 
selves mastered the cougar and the black bear. Such 
instances occurred in the hunting history of my own 
forefathers on my mother's side, who during the last 

267 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

half of the eighteenth, and the first half of the present, 
century lived in Georgia and over the border in what 
are now Alabama and Florida. These big dogs can 
overcome such foes only by rushing in in a body and 
grappling all together; if they hang back, lunging and 
snapping, a cougar or bear will destroy them one by 
one. With a quarry so huge and redoubtable as the 
grizzly, no number of dogs, however large and fierce, 
could overcome him unless they all rushed on him in 
a mass, the first in the charge seizing by the head or 
throat. If the dogs hung back, or if there were only a 
few of them, or if they did not seize around the head, 
they would be destroyed without an effort. It is 
murder to slip merely one or two close-quarter dogs at 
a grizzly. Twice I have known a man take a large bull- 
dog with his pack when after one of these big bears and 
in each case the result was the same. In one instance 
the bear was trotting when the bulldog seized it by 
the cheek, and without so much as altering its gait, 
it brushed off the hanging dog with a blow from the 
fore paw that broke the latter's back. In the other 
instance the bear had come to bay, and when seized 
by the ear it got the dog's body up to its jaws, and 
tore out the life with one crunch. 

A small number of dogs must rely on their activity, 
and must hamper the bear's escape by inflicting a se- 
vere bite and avoiding the counter-stroke. The only 
dog I ever heard of which, single-handed, was really 
of service in stopping a grizzly, was a big Mexican 
sheep-dog, once owned by the hunter Tazewell Woody. 
It was an agile beast with powerful jaws, and possessed 
both intelligence and a fierce, resolute temper. Woody 
killed three grizzlies with its aid. It attacked with 
equal caution and ferocity, rushing at the bear as the 

268 



OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRIZZLY BEAR 

latter ran, and seizing the outstretched hock with a 
grip of iron, stopping the bear short, but letting go 
before the angry beast could whirl round and seize it. 
It was so active and wary that it always escaped dam- 
age; and it was so strong and bit so severely that the 
bear could not possibly run from it at any speed. In 
consequence, if it once came to close quarters with its 
quarry, Woody could always get near enough for a 
shot. 

Hitherto, however, the mountain hunters — as dis- 
tinguished from the trappers — who have followed the 
grizzly have relied almost solely on their rifles. In my 
own case about half the bears I have killed I stumbled 
across almost by accident; and probably this propor- 
tion holds good generally. The hunter may be after 
bear at the time, or he may be after blacktail deer or 
elk, the common game in most of the haunts of the 
grizzly; or he may merely be travelling through the 
country or prospecting for gold. Suddenly he comes 
over the edge of a cut bank, or round the sharp spur 
of a mountain or the shoulder of a cliff which walls in 
a ravine, or else the indistinct game trail he has been 
following through the great trees twists sharply to one 
side to avoid a rock or a mass of down timber, and 
behold he surprises old Ephraim digging for roots, or 
munching berrries, or slouching along the path, or per- 
haps rising suddenly from the lush, rank plants amid 
which he has been lying. Or it may be that the bear 
will be spied afar rooting in an open glade or on a bare 
hillside. 

In the still-hunt proper it is necessary to find some 
favorite feeding-ground, where there are many roots or 
berry-bearing bushes, or else to lure the grizzly to a 
carcass. This last method of "baiting" for bear is 

269 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

under ordinary circumstances the only way which af- 
fords even a moderately fair chance of killing them. 
They are very cunning, with the sharpest of noses, and 
where they have had experience of hunters they dwell 
only in cover where it is almost impossible for the best 
still-hunters to approach them. 

Nevertheless, in favorable ground a man can often 
find and kill them by fair stalking, in berry time, or 
more especially in the early spring, before the snow 
has gone from the mountains, and while the bears are 
driven by hunger to roam much abroad and some- 
times to seek their food in the open. In such cases the 
still-hunter is stirring by the earliest dawn, and walks 
with stealthy speed to some high point of observation 
from which he can overlook the feeding-grounds where 
he has previously discovered sign. From the coign 
of vantage he scans the country far and near, either 
with his own keen eyes or with powerful glasses; and 
he must combine patience and good sight with the 
ability to traverse long distances noiselessly and yet 
at speed. He may spend two or three hours sitting 
still and looking over a vast tract of country before he 
will suddenly spy a bear; or he may see nothing after 
the most careful search in a given place, and must then 
go on half a dozen miles to another, watching warily as 
he walks, and continuing this possibly for several days 
before getting a glimpse of his game. If the bear are 
digging roots, or otherwise procuring their food on the 
bare hillsides and table-lands, it is of course com- 
paratively easy to see them; and it is under such cir- 
cumstances that this kind of hunting is most successful. 
Once seen, the actual stalk may take two or three hours, 
the nature of the ground and the direction of the wind 
often necessitating a long circuit; perhaps a gully, a 

270 



OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRIZZLY BEAR 

rock, or a fallen log offers a chance for an approach to 
within two hundred yards, and although the hunter 
will, if possible, get much closer than this, yet even at 
such a distance a bear is a large enough mark to warrant 
risking a shot. 

Usually the berry grounds do not offer such favorable 
opportunities, as they often lie in thick timber, or are 
covered so densely with bushes as to obstruct the view; 
and they are rarely commanded by a favorable spot 
from which to spy. On the other hand, as already 
said, bears occasionally forget all their watchfulness 
while devouring fruit, and make such a noise rending 
and tearing the bushes that, if once found, a man can 
creep upon them unobserved. 



271 



XV 

HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

If out in the late fall or early spring, it is often 
possible to follow a bear's trail in the snow; having 
come upon it either by chance or hard hunting, or else 
having found where it leads from some carcass on 
which the beast has been feeding. In the pursuit one 
must exercise great caution, as at such times the hunter 
is easily seen a long way off, and game is always espe- 
cially watchful for any foe that may follow its trail. 

Once I killed a grizzly in this manner. It was early 
in the fall, but snow lay on the ground, while the gray 
weather boded a storm. My camp was in a bleak, 
wind-swept valley, high among the mountains which 
form the divide between the headwaters of the Salmon 
and Clark's Fork of the Columbia. All night I had 
lain in my buffalo bag, under the lee of a windbreak of 
branches, in the clump of fir-trees, where I had halted 
the preceding evening. At my feet ran a rapid moun- 
tain torrent, its bed choked with ice-covered rocks; 
I had been lulled to sleep by the stream's splashing 
murmur, and the loud moaning of the wind along the 
naked cliffs. At dawn I rose and shook myself free of 
the buffalo-robe, coated with hoarfrost. The ashes of 
the fire were lifeless; in the dim morning the air was 
bitter cold. I did not linger a moment, but snatched 
up my rifle, pulled on my fur cap and gloves and strode 
off up a side ravine; as I walked I ate some mouthfuls 
of venison, left over from supper. 

Two hours of toil up the steep mountain brought 
me to the top of a spur. The sun had risen, but was 

272 



HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

hidden behind a bank of sullen clouds. On the divide 
I halted, and gazed out over a vast landscape, incon- 
ceivably wild and dismal. Around me towered the 
stupendous mountain masses which make up the back- 
bone of the Rockies. From my feet, as far as I could 
see, stretched a rugged and barren chaos of ridges and 
detached rock masses. Behind me, far below, the 
stream wound like a silver ribbon, fringed with dark 
conifers and the changing, dying foliage of poplar and 
quaking aspen. In front the bottoms of the valleys 
were filled with the sombre evergreen forest, dotted 
here and there with black, ice-skimmed tarns; and the 
dark spruces clustered also in the higher gorges and 
were scattered thinly along the mountainsides. The 
snow which had fallen lay in drifts and streaks, while 
where the wind had scope it was blown off and the 
ground left bare. 

For two hours I walked onward across the ridges and 
valleys. Then among some scattered spruces, where 
the snow lay to the depth of half a foot, I suddenly 
came on the fresh, broad trail of a grizzly. The brute 
was evidently roaming restlessly about in search of a 
winter den, but willing, in passing, to pick up any food 
that lay handy. At once I took the trail, travelling 
above and to one side, and keeping a sharp lookout 
ahead. The bear was going across wind, and this made 
my task easy. I walked rapidly, though cautiously; 
and it was only in crossing the large patches of bare 
ground that I had to fear making a noise. Elsewhere 
the snow muffled my footsteps, and made the trail so 
plain that I scarcely had to waste a glance upon it, 
bending my eyes always to the front. 

At last, peering cautiously over a ridge crowned 
with broken rocks, I saw my quarry, a big, burly bear, 

273 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

with silvered fur. He had halted on an open hillside, 
and was busily digging up the caches of some rock 
gophers or squirrels. He seemed absorbed in his work, 
and the stalk was easy. Slipping quietly back, I ran 
toward the end of the spur, and in ten minutes struck 
a ravine, of which one branch ran past within seventy 
yards of where the bear was working. In this ravine 
was a rather close growth of stunted evergreens, af- 
fording good cover, although in one or two places I 
had to lie down and crawl through the snow. When 
I reached the point for which I was aiming, the bear 
had just finished rooting, and was starting off. A 
slight whistle brought him to a standstill, and I drew 
a bead behind his shoulder, and low down, resting the 
rifle across the crooked branch of a dwarf spruce. At 
the crack he ran off at speed, making no sound, but the 
thick spatter of blood splashes, showing clear on the 
white snow, betrayed the mortal nature of the wound. 
For some minutes I followed the trail; and then, top- 
ping a ridge, I saw the dark bulk lying motionless in a 
snow-drift at the foot of a low rock wall, down which 
he had tumbled. 

The usual practice of the still-hunter who is after 
grizzly is to toll it to baits. The hunter either lies in 
ambush near the carcass, or approaches it stealthily 
when he thinks the bear is at its meal. 

One day while camped near the Bitter Root Moun- 
tains in Montana I found that a bear had been feeding 
on the carcass of a moose which lay some five miles 
from the little open glade in which my tent was pitched, 
and I made up my mind to try to get a shot at it that 
afternoon. I stayed in camp till about three o'clock, 
lying lazily back on the bed of sweet-smelling evergreen 
boughs, watching the pack-ponies as they stood under 

274 



HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

the pines on the edge of the open, stamping now and 
then, and switching their tails. The air was still, the 
sky a glorious blue; at that hour in the afternoon even 
the September sun was hot. The smoke from the 
smouldering logs of the camp-fire curled thinly upward. 
Little chipmunks scuttled out from their holes to the 
packs, which lay in a heap on the ground, and then 
scuttled madly back again. A couple of drab-colored 
whiskey-jacks, with bold mien and fearless bright eyes, 
hopped and fluttered round, picking up the scraps, 
and uttering an extraordinary variety of notes, mostly 
discordant; so tame were they that one of them lit 
on my outstretched arm as I half dozed, basking in the 
sunshine. 

When the shadows began to lengthen, I shouldered 
my rifle and plunged into the woods. At first my route 
lay along a mountainside; then for half a mile over a 
windfall, the dead timber piled about in crazy confu- 
sion. After that I went up the bottom of a valley by 
a little brook, the ground being carpeted with a sponge 
of soaked moss. At the head of this brook was a pond 
covered with water-lilies; and a scramble through a 
rocky pass took me into a high, wet valley, where the 
thick growth of spruce was broken by occasional 
strips of meadow. In this valley the moose carcass 
lay, well at the upper end. 

In moccasined feet I trod softly through the sound- 
less woods. Under the dark branches it was already 
dusk, and the air had the cool chill of evening. As I 
neared the clump where the body lay, I walked with 
redoubled caution, watching and listening with strained 
alertness. Then I heard a twig snap; and my blood 
leaped, for I knew the bear was at his supper. In 
another moment I saw his shaggy, brown form. He 

275 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

was working with all his awkward giant strength, 
trying to bury the carcass, twisting it to one side and 
the other with wonderful ease. Once he got angry 
and suddenly gave it a tremendous cuff with his paw; 
in his bearing he had something half humorous, half 
devilish. I crept up within forty yards ; but for several 
minutes he would not keep his head still. Then some- 
thing attracted his attention in the forest, and he stood 
motionless looking toward it, broadside to me, with his 
fore paws planted on the carcass. This gave me my 
chance. I drew a very fine bead between his eye and 
ear, and pulled the trigger. He dropped like a steer 
when struck with a poleaxe. 

If there is a good hiding-place handy it is better to 
lie in wait at the carcass. One day on the headwaters 
of the Madison, I found that a bear was coming to an 
elk I had shot some days before; and I at once deter- 
mined to ambush the beast when he came back that 
evening. The carcass lay in the middle of a valley a 
quarter of a mile broad. The bottom of this valley 
was covered by an open forest of tall pines; a thick 
jungle of smaller evergreens marked where the moun- 
tains rose on either hand. There were a number of 
large rocks scattered here and there, one, of very con- 
venient shape, being only some seventy or eighty yards 
from the carcass. Up this I clambered. It hid me 
perfectly, and on its top was a carpet of soft pine- 
needles, on which I could lie at my ease. 

Hour after hour passed by. A little black wood- 
pecker with a yellow crest ran nimbly up and down 
the tree-trunks for some time and then flitted away 
with a party of chickadees and nuthatches. Occasion- 
ally a Clark's crow soared about overhead or clung in 
any position to the swaying end of a pine branch, 

276 



HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

chattering and screaming. Flocks of crossbills, with 
wavy flight and plaintive calls, flew to a small mineral 
lick near by, where they scraped the clay with their 
queer little beaks. 

As the westering sun sank out of sight beyond the 
mountains these sounds of bird life gradually died 
away. Under the great pines the evening was still with 
the silence of primeval desolation. The sense of sad- 
ness and loneliness, the melancholy of the wilderness, 
came over me like a spell. Every slight noise made 
my pulses throb as I lay motionless on the rock gazing 
intently into the gathering gloom. I began to fear that 
it would grow too dark to shoot before the grizzly came. 

Suddenly, and without warning, the great bear 
stepped out of the bushes and trod across the pine- 
needles with such swift and silent footsteps that its 
bulk seemed unreal. It was very cautious, continually 
halting to peer around; and once it stood up on its 
hind legs and looked long down the valley toward the 
red west. As it reached the carcass I put a bullet 
between its shoulders. It rolled over, while the woods 
resounded with its savage roaring. Immediately it 
struggled to its feet and staggered off; and fell again 
to the next shot, squalling and yelling. Twice this was 
repeated; the brute being one of those bears which 
greet every wound with a great outcry, and sometimes 
seem to lose their feet when hit — although they will 
occasionally fight as savagely as their more silent 
brethren. In this case, the wounds were mortal, and 
the bear died before reaching the edge of the thicket. 

I spent much of the fall of 1889 hunting on the head- 
waters of the Salmon and Snake in Idaho, and along 
the Montana boundary-line from the Big Hole Basin 
and the head of the Wisdom River to the neighborhood 

277 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

of Red Rock Pass and to the north and west of Henry's 
Lake. During the last fortnight my companion was 
the old mountain-man, already mentioned, name 
Griff eth or Griffin — I cannot tell which, as he was 
always called either "Hank" or "Griff." He was a 
crabbedly honest old fellow, and a very skilful hunter; 
but he was worn out with age and rheumatism, and 
his temper had failed even faster than his bodily 
strength. He showed me a greater variety of game 
than I had ever seen before in so short a time; nor 
did I ever before or after make so successful a hunt. 
But he was an exceedingly disagreeable companion on 
account of his surly, moody ways. I generally had 
to get up first, to kindle the fire, and make ready 
breakfast, and he was very quarrelsome. Finally, 
during my absence from camp one day, while not very 
far from Red Rock Pass, he found my whiskey-flask, 
which I kept purely for emergencies, and drank all the 
contents. When I came back he was quite drunk. 
This was unbearable, and after some high words I 
left him, and struck off homeward through the woods 
on my own account. We had with us four pack and 
saddle horses; and of these I took a very intelligent 
and gentle little bronco mare, which possessed the in- 
valuable trait of always staying near camp, even when 
not hobbled. I was not hampered with much of an 
outfit, having only my buffalo sleeping-bag, a fur coat, 
and my washing kit, with a couple of spare pairs of 
socks and some handkerchiefs. A frying-pan, some 
salt, flour, baking-powder, a small chunk of salt pork, 
and a hatchet, made up a light pack, which, with the 
bedding, I fastened across the stock -saddle by means 
of a rope and a spare packing cinch. My cartridges 
and knife were in my belt; my compass and matches, 

278 



HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

as always, in my pocket. I walked, while the little 
mare followed almost like a dog, often without my 
having to hold the lariat which served as halter. 

The country was for the most part fairly open, as 
I kept near the foot-hills where glades and little prairies 
broke the pine forest. The trees were of small size. 
There was no regular trail, but the course was easy to 
keep, and I had no trouble of any kind save on the 
second day. That afternoon I was following a stream 
which at last "canyoned up"; that is, sank to the 
bottom of a canyon-like ravine impassable for a horse. 
I started up a side valley, intending to cross from its 
head coulees to those of another valley which would 
lead in below the canyon. 

However, I got enmeshed in the tangle of winding 
valleys at the foot of the steep mountains, and as 
dusk was coming on I halted and camped in a little 
open spot by the side of a small, noisy brook, with 
crystal water. The place was carpeted with soft, wet, 
green moss, dotted red with the kinnikinic-berries, and 
at its edge, under the trees where the ground was dry, 
I threw down the buffalo bed on the mat of sweet- 
smelling pine-needles. Making camp took but a mo- 
ment. I opened the pack, tossed the bedding on a 
smooth spot, knee-haltered the little mare, dragged 
up a few dry logs, and then strolled off, rifle on shoulder, 
through the frosty gloaming, to see if I could pick up 
a grouse for supper. 

For half a mile I walked quickly and silently over 
the pine-needles, across a succession of slight ridges 
separated by narrow, shallow valleys. The forest here 
was composed of lodge-pole pines, which on the ridges 
grew close together, with tall slender trunks, while in 
the valleys the growth was more open. Though the 

279 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

sun was behind the mountains there was yet plenty 
of Hght by which to shoot, but it was fading rapidly. 

At last, as I was thinking of turning toward camp, 
I stole up to the crest of one of the ridges, and looked 
over into the valley some sixty yards off. Immediately 
I caught the loom of some large, dark object; and 
another glance showed me a big grizzly walking slowly 
off with his head down. He was quartering to me, and 
I fired into his flank, the bullet, as I afterward found, 
ranging forward and piercing one lung. At the shot 
he uttered a loud, moaning grunt, and plunged forward 
at a heavy gallop, while I raced obliquely down the 
hill to cut him off. After going a few hundred feet 
he reached a laurel thicket, some thirty yards broad, 
and two or three times as long, which he did not leave. 
I ran up to the edge and there halted, not liking to 
venture into the mass of twisted, close-growing stems 
and glossy foliage. Moreover, as I halted, I heard him 
utter a peculiar, savage kind of whine from the heart 
of the brush. Accordingly, I began to skirt the edge, 
standing on tiptoe and gazing earnestly to see if I 
could not catch a glimpse of his hide. When I was at 
the narrowest part of the thicket, he suddenly left it 
directly opposite, and then wheeled and stood broad- 
side to me on the hillside, a little above. He turned 
his head stiffly toward me; scarlet strings of froth 
hung from his lips; his eyes burned like embers in the 
gloom. 

I held true, aiming behind the shoulder, and my 
bullet shattered the point or lower end of his heart, 
taking out a big nick. Instantly the great bear turned 
with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the 
bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam 
of his white fangs; and then he charged straight at 

280 



HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

me, crashing and bounding through the laurel bushes, 
so that it was hard to aim. I waited till he came to 
a fallen tree, raking him as he topped it with a ball, 
which entered his chest and went through the cavity 
of his body, but he neither swerved nor flinched, and 
at the moment I did not know that I had struck him. 
He came steadily on, and in another second was almost 
upon me. I fired for his forehead, but my bullet went 
low, entering his open mouth, smashing his lower jaw 
and going into the neck. I leaped to one side almost as 
I pulled the trigger; and through the hanging smoke 
the first thing I saw was his paw as he made a vicious 
side blow at me. The rush of his charge carried him 
past. As he struck he lurched forward, leaving a pool 
of bright blood where his muzzle hit the ground; but 
he recovered himself and made two or three jumps 
onward, while I hurriedly jammed a couple of cartridges 
into the magazine, my rifle holding only four, all of 
which I had fired. Then he tried to pull up, but as 
he did so his muscles seemed suddenly to give way, his 
head drooped, and he rolled over and over like a shot 
rabbit. Each of my first three bullets had inflicted a 
mortal wound. 

It was already twilight, and I merely opened the 
carcass, and then trotted back to camp. Next morning 
I returned and with much labor took off the skin. The 
fur was very fine, the animal being in excellent trim, 
and unusually bright-colored. Unfortunately, in pack- 
ing it out I lost the skull, and had to supply its place 
with one of plaster. The beauty of the trophy, and 
the memory of the circumstances under which I pro- 
cured it, make me value it perhaps more highly than 
any other in my house. 

This is the only instance in which I have been regu- 

281 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

larly charged by a grizzly. On the whole, the danger 
of hunting these great bears has been much exagger- 
ated. At the beginning of the present century, when 
white hunters first encountered the grizzly, he was 
doubtless an exceedingly savage beast, prone to attack 
without provocation, and a redoubtable foe to persons 
armed with the clumsy, small-bore, muzzle-loading 
rifles of the day. But at present bitter experience has 
taught him caution. He has been hunted for sport 
and hunted for his pelt and hunted for the bounty and 
hunted as a dangerous enemy to stock, until, save in 
the very wildest districts, he has learned to be more 
wary than a deer and to avoid man's presence almost 
as carefully as the most timid kind of game. Except 
in rare cases he will not attack of his own accord, and, 
as a rule, even when wounded, his object is escape 
rather than battle. 

Still, when fairly brought to bay, or when moved by 
a sudden fit of ungovernable anger, the grizzly is beyond 
peradventure a very dangerous antagonist. The first 
shot, if taken at a bear a good distance off and pre- 
viously unwounded and unharried, is not usually fraught 
with much danger, the startled animal being at the out- 
set bent merely on flight. It is always hazardous, how- 
ever, to track a wounded and worried grizzly into thick 
cover, and the man who habitually follows and kills 
this chief of American game in dense timber, never 
abandoning the bloody trail whithersoever it leads, must 
show no small degree of skill and hardihood, and must 
not too closely count the risk to life and limb. Bears 
differ widely in temper, and occasionally one may be 
found who will not show fight, no matter how much he 
is bullied; but, as a rule, a hunter must be cautious in 
meddling with a wounded animal which has retreated 

282 



HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

into a dense thicket, and has been once or twice roused; 
and such a beast, when it does turn, will usually charge 
again and again, and fight to the last with unconquera- 
ble ferocity. The short distance at which the bear can 
be seen through the underbrush, the fury of his charge, 
and his tenacity of life make it necessary for the hunter 
on such occasions to have steady nerves and a fairly 
quick and accurate aim. It is always well to have 
two men in following a wounded bear under such con- 
ditions. This is not necessary, however, and a good 
hunter, rather than lose his quarry, will, under ordinary 
circumstances, follow and attack it, no matter how 
tangled the fastness in which it has sought refuge; but 
he must act warily and with the utmost caution and 
resolution, if he wishes to escape a terrible and probably 
fatal mauling. An experienced hunter is rarely rash, 
and never heedless; he will not, when alone, follow a 
wounded bear into a thicket, if by the exercise of 
patience, skill, and knowledge of the game's habits he 
can avoid the necessity; but it is idle to talk of the 
feat as something which ought in no case to be at- 
tempted. While danger ought never to be needlessly 
incurred, it is yet true that the keenest zest in sport 
comes from its presence, and from the consequent 
exercise of the qualities necessary to overcome it. 
The most thrilling moments of an American hunter's 
life are those in which, with every sense on the alert, 
and with nerves strung to the highest point, he is 
following alone into the heart of its forest fastness 
the fresh and bloody footprints of an angered grizzly; 
and no other triumph of American hunting can com- 
pare with the victory to be thus gained. 

These big bears will not ordinarily charge from a 
distance of over a hundred yards; but there are ex- 

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THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

ceptions to this rule. In the fall of 1890 my friend 
Archibald Rogers was hunting in Wyoming, south of 
the Yellowstone Park, and killed seven bears. One, 
an old he, was out on a bare table-land, grubbing for 
roots, when he was spied. It was early in the afternoon, 
and the hunters, who were on a high mountain slope, 
examined him for some time through their powerful 
glasses before making him out to be a bear. They 
then stalked up to the edge of the wood which fringed 
the table-land on one side, but could get no nearer than 
about three hundred yards, the plains being barren of 
all cover. After waiting for a couple of hours Rogers 
risked the shot, in despair of getting nearer, and 
wounded the bear, though not very seriously. The 
animal made off, almost broadside to, and Rogers ran 
forward to intercept it. As soon as it saw him, it 
turned and rushed straight for him, not heeding his 
second shot, and evidently bent on charging home. 
Rogers then waited until it was within twenty yards, 
and brained it with his third bullet. 

In fact, bears differ individually in courage and fe- 
rocity precisely as men do, or as the Spanish bulls, of 
which it is said that not more than one in twenty is fit to 
stand the combat of the arena. One grizzly can scarcely 
be bullied into resistance; the next may fight to the 
end, against any odds, without flinching, or even at- 
tack unprovoked. Hence men of limited experience 
in this sport, generalizing from the actions of the two 
or three bears each has happened to see or kill, often 
reach diametrically opposite conclusions as to the fight- 
ing temper and capacity of the quarry. Even old hunt- 
ers — who indeed, as a class, are very narrow-minded 
and opinionated — often generalize just as rashly as 
beginners. One will portray all bears as very danger- 

284 



HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

ous; another will speak and act as if he deemed them 
of no more consequence than so many rabbits. I 
knew one old hunter who had killed a score without 
ever seeing one show fight. On the other hand, Doctor 
James C. Merrill, U. S. A., who has had about as much 
experience with bears as I have had, informs me that 
he has been charged with the utmost determination 
three times. In each case the attack was delivered 
before the bear was wounded or even shot at, the animal 
being roused by the approach of the hunters from his 
day-bed, and charging headlong at them from a dis- 
tance of twenty or thirty paces. All three bears were 
killed before they could do any damage. There was a 
very remarkable incident connected with the killing of 
one of them. It occurred in the northern spurs of the 
Bighorn range. Doctor Merrill, in company with an 
old hunter, had climbed down into a deep, narrow 
canyon. The bottom was threaded with well-beaten 
elk trails. While following one of these the two men 
turned a corner of the canyon and were instantly 
charged by an old she grizzly, so close that it was only 
by good luck that one of the hurried shots disabled 
her and caused her to tumble over a cut bank, where 
she was easily finished. They found that she had 
been lying directly across the game trail, on a smooth 
well-beaten patch of bare earth, which looked as if it 
had been dug up, refilled, and trampled down. Looking 
curiously at this patch they saw a bit of hide only 
partially covered at one end; digging down they found 
the body of a well-grown grizzly cub. Its skull had been 
crushed, and the brains licked out, and there were 
signs of other injuries. The hunters pondered long 
over this strange discovery, and hazarded many guesses 
as to its meaning. At last they decided that probably 

285 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the cub had been killed, and its brains eaten out, either 
by some old male grizzly or by a cougar, that the mother 
had returned and driven away the murderer, and that 
she had then buried the body and lain above it, waiting 
to wreak her vengeance on the first passer-by. 

Old Tazewell Woody, during his thirty years' life as 
a hunter in the Rockies and on the great plains, killed 
very many grizzlies. He always exercised much caution 
in dealing with them; and, as it happened, he was by 
some suitable tree in almost every case when he was 
charged. He would accordingly climb the tree (a 
practice of which I do not approve, however); and 
the bear would look up at him and pass on without stop- 
ping. Once, when he was hunting in the mountains 
with a companion, the latter, who was down in a val- 
ley while Woody was on the hillside, shot at a bear. 
The first thing Woody knew the wounded grizzly, run- 
ning uphill, was almost on him from behind. As he 
turned it seized his rifle in its jaws. He wrenched the 
rifle round, while the bear still gripped it, and pulled 
trigger, sending a bullet into its shoulder; whereupon 
it struck him with its paw, and knocked him over the 
rocks. By good luck he fell in a snow-bank and was 
not hurt in the least. Meanwhile the bear went on 
and they never got it. 

Once he had an experience with a bear which showed 
a very curious mixture of rashness and cowardice. He 
and a companion were camped in a little teepee or wig- 
wam, with a bright fire in front of it, lighting up the 
night. There was an inch of snow on the ground. Just 
after they went to bed a grizzly came close to camp. 
Their dog rushed out and they could hear it bark 
round in the darkness for nearly an hour; then the 
bear drove it off and came right into camp. It went 

286 



HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

close to the fire, picking up the scraps of meat and 
bread, pulled a haunch of venison down from a tree, and 
passed and repassed in front of the teepee, paying no 
heed whatever to the two men, who crouched in the 
doorway talking to one another. Once it passed so 
close that Woody could almost touch it. Finally his 
companion fired into it, and off it ran, badly wounded, 
without an attempt at retaliation. Next morning they 
followed its tracks in the snow, and found it a quarter 
of a mile away. It was near a pine and had buried 
itself under the loose earth, pine-needles, and snow; 
Woody's companion almost walked over it, and putting 
his rifle to its ear blew out its brains. 

In all his experience Woody had personally seen but 
four men who were badly mauled by bears. Three 
of these were merely wounded. One was bitten terribly 
in the back. Another had an arm partially chewed off. 
The third was a man named George Dow, and the 
accident happened to him on the Yellowstone, about 
the year 1878. He was with a pack-animal at the time, 
leading it on a trail through a wood. Seeing a big she 
bear with cubs he yelled at her; whereat she ran away, 
but only to cache her cubs, and in a minute, having 
hidden them, came racing back at him. His pack- 
animal being slow he started to climb a tree; but 
before he could get far enough up she caught him, 
almost biting a piece out of the calf of his leg, pulled 
him down, bit and cuffed him two or three times, and 
then went on her way. 

The only time Woody ever saw a man killed by a 
bear was once when he had given a touch of variety 
to his life by shipping on a New Bedford whaler which 
had touched at one of the Puget Sound ports. The 
whaler went up to a part of Alaska where bears were 

287 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

very plentiful and bold. One day a couple of boats' 
crews landed; and the men, who were armed only with 
an occasional harpoon or lance, scattered over the 
beach, one of them, a Frenchman, wading into the 
water after shell-fish. Suddenly a bear emerged from 
some bushes and charged among the astonished sailors, 
who scattered in every direction; but the bear, said 
Woody, "just had it in for that Frenchman," and 
went straight at him. Shrieking with terror he re- 
treated up to his neck in the water; but the bear 
plunged in after him, caught him, and disembowelled 
him. One of the Yankee mates then fired a bomb-lance 
into the bear's hips, and the savage beast hobbled off 
into the dense cover of the low scrub, where the en- 
raged sailor-folk were unable to get at it. 

The truth is that while the grizzly generally avoids a 
battle if possible, and often acts with great cowardice, 
it is never safe to take liberties with him; he usually 
fights desperately and dies hard when wounded and 
cornered, and exceptional individuals take the aggres- 
sive on small provocation. 

During the years I lived on the frontier I came in 
contact with many persons who had been severely 
mauled or even crippled for life by grizzlies; and a 
number of cases where they killed men outright were 
also brought under my ken. Generally these accidents, 
as was natural, occurred to hunters who had roused 
or wounded the game. 

A fighting bear sometimes uses his claws and some- 
times his teeth. I have never known one to attempt 
to kill an antagonist by hugging, in spite of the popu- 
lar belief to this effect; though he will sometimes draw 
an enemy toward him with his paws the better to reach 
him with his teeth, and to hold him so that he cannot 

288 



HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

escape from the biting. Nor does the bear often ad- 
vance on his hind legs to the attack; though, if the 
man has come close to him in thick underbrush, or 
has stumbled on him in his lair unawares, he will 
often rise up in this fashion and strike a single blow. 
He will also rise in clinching with a man on horseback. 
In 1882 a mounted Indian was killed in this manner on 
one of the river-bottoms some miles below where my 
ranch -house now stands, not far from the junction of the 
Beaver and Little Missouri. The bear had been hunted 
into a thicket by a band of Indians, in whose com- 
pany my informant, a white squaw-man, with whom I 
afterward did some trading, was travelling. One of 
them in the excitement of the pursuit rode across the 
end of the thicket; as he did so the great beast sprang 
at him with wonderful quickness, rising on its hind legs, 
and knocking over the horse and rider with a single 
sweep of its terrible fore paws. It then turned on the 
fallen man and tore him open, and though the other 
Indians came promptly to his rescue and slew his assail- 
ant, they were not in time to save their comrade's life. 
A bear is apt to rely mainly on his teeth or claws 
according to whether his efforts are directed primarily 
to killing his foe or to making good his own escape. 
In the latter event he trusts chiefly to his claws. If 
cornered, he of course makes a rush for freedom, and 
in that case he downs any man who is in his way with 
a sweep of his great paw, but passes on without stopping 
to bite him. If while sleeping or resting in thick brush 
some one suddenly stumbles on him close up he pursues 
the same course, less from anger than from fear, being 
surprised and startled. Moreover, if attacked at close 
quarters by men and dogs he strikes right and left in 
defense. 

289 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

Sometimes what is called a charge is rather an effort 
to get away. In localities where he has been hunted, a 
bear, like every other kind of game, is always on the 
lookout for an attack, and is prepared at any moment 
for immediate flight. He seems ever to have in his 
mind, whether feeding, sunning himself, or merely 
roaming around, the direction — usually toward the 
thickest cover or most broken ground — in which he 
intends to run if molested. When shot at he instantly 
starts toward this place; or he may be so confused 
that he simply runs he knows not whither; and in 
either event he may take a line that leads almost 
directly to or by the hunter, although he had at first 
no thought of charging. In such a case he usually 
strikes a single knock-down blow and gallops on without 
halting, though that one blow may have taken life. If 
the claws are long and fairly sharp (as in early spring, 
or even in the fall, if the animal has been working over 
soft ground) they add immensely to the effect of the 
blow, for they cut like blunt axes. Often, however, 
late in the season, and if the ground has been dry and 
hard, or rocky, the claws are worn down nearly to the 
quick, and the blow is then given mainly with the 
under side of the paw; although even under this 
disadvantage a thump from a big bear will down a 
horse or smash in a man's breast. The hunter Hofer 
once lost a horse in this manner. He shot at and 
wounded a bear which rushed off, as ill luck would have 
it, past the place where his horse was picketed; prob- 
ably more in fright than in anger it struck the poor 
beast a blow which, in the end, proved mortal. 

If a bear means mischief and charges not to escape 
but to do damage, its aim is to grapple with or throw 
down its foe and bite him to death. The charge is 

290 



HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

made at a gallop, the animal sometimes coming on 
silently, with the mouth shut, and sometimes with the 
jaws open, the lips drawn back and teeth showing, 
uttering at the same time a succession of roars or of 
savage, rasping snarls. Certain bears charge without 
any bluster and perfectly straight; while others first 
threaten and bully, and even when charging stop to 
growl, shake the head, and bite at a bush or knock 
holes in the ground with their fore paws. Again, some 
of them charge home with a ferocious resolution which 
their extreme tenacity of life renders especially danger- 
ous; while others can be turned or driven back even 
by a shot which is not mortal. They show the same 
variability in their behavior when wounded. Often 
a big bear, especially if charging, will receive a bullet 
in perfect silence, without flinching or seeming to pay 
any heed to it; while another will cry out and tumble 
about, and if charging, even though it may not abandon 
the attack, will pause for a moment to whine or bite 
at the wound. 

Sometimes a single bite causes death. One of the 
most successful bear-hunters I ever knew, an old fellow 
whose real name I never heard as he was always called 
Old Ike, was killed in this way in the spring or early 
summer of 1886 on one of the headwaters of the 
Salmon. He was a very good shot, had killed nearly 
a hundred bears with the rifle, and, although often 
charged, had never met with any accident, so that he 
had grown somewhat careless. On the day in question 
he had met a couple of mining prospectors and was 
travelling with them, when a grizzly crossed his path. 
The old hunter immediately ran after it, rapidly gaining, 
as the bear did not hurry when it saw itself pursued, 
but slouched slowly forward, occasionally turning its 

291 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

head to grin and growl. It soon went into a dense 
grove of young spruce, and as the hunter reached 
the edge it charged fiercely out. He fired one hasty 
shot, evidently wounding the animal, but not seriously 
enough to stop or cripple it; and as his two companions 
ran forward they saw the bear seize him with its wide- 
spread jaws, forcing him to the ground. They shouted 
and fired, and the beast abandoned the fallen man 
on the instant and sullenly retreated into the spruce 
thicket, whither they dared not follow it. Their friend 
was at his last gasp; for the whole side of the chest 
had been crushed in by the one bite, the lungs showing 
between the rent ribs. 

Very often, however, a bear does not kill a man by 
one bite, but after throwing him lies on him, biting 
him to death. Usually, if no assistance is at hand, 
such a man is doomed; although if he pretends to be 
dead, and has the nerve to lie quiet under very rough 
treatment, it is just possible that the bear may leave 
him alive, perhaps after half burying what it believes 
to be the body. In a very few exceptional instances 
men of extraordinary prowess with the knife have 
succeeded in beating off a bear, and even in mortally 
wounding it, but in most cases a single-handed struggle, 
at close quarters, with a grizzly bent on mischief, means 
death. 

Occasionally the bear, although vicious, is also 
frightened, and passes on after giving one or two bites; 
and frequently a man who is knocked down is rescued 
by his friends before he is killed, the big beast mayhap 
using his weapons with clumsiness. So a bear may kill 
a foe with a single blow of its mighty forearm, either 
crushing in the head or chest by sheer force of sinew, 
or else tearing open the body with its formidable claws; 

292 



HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

and so on the other hand he may, and often does, 
merely disfigure or maim the foe by a hurried stroke. 
Hence it is common to see men who have escaped the 
clutches of a grizzly, but only at the cost of features 
marred beyond recognition, or a body rendered almost 
helpless for life. Almost every old resident of western 
Montana or northern Idaho has known two or three 
unfortunates who have suffered in this manner. I have 
myself met one such man in Helena, and another in 
Missoula; both were living at least as late as 1889, 
the date at which I last saw them. One had been 
partially scalped by a bear's teeth; the animal was 
very old and so the fangs did not enter the skull. The 
other had been bitten across the face, and the wounds 
never entirely healed, so that his disfigured visage was 
hideous to behold. 

Most of these accidents occur in following a wounded 
or worried bear into thick cover; and under such 
circumstances an animal apparently hopelessly disabled, 
or in the death-throes, may with a last effort kill one or 
more of its assailants. In 1874 my wife's uncle, Cap- 
tain Alexander Moore, U. S. A., and my friend Captain 
Bates, with some men of the 2d and 3d Cavalry, were 
scouting in Wyoming, near the Freezeout Mountains. 
One morning they roused a bear in the open prairie 
and followed it at full speed as it ran toward a small 
creek. At one spot in the creek beavers had built a 
dam, and as usual in such places there was a thick 
growth of bushes and willow saplings. Just as the 
bear reached the edge of this little jungle it was struck 
by several balls, both of its fore legs being broken. 
Nevertheless, it managed to shove itself forward on 
its hind legs, and partly rolled, partly pushed itself into 
the thicket, the bushes though low being so dense that 

293 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

its body was at once completely hidden. The thicket 
was a mere patch of brush, not twenty yards across in 
any direction. The leading troopers reached the edge 
almost as the bear tumbled in. One of them, a tall and 
powerful man named Miller, instantly dismounted and 
prepared to force his way in among the dwarfed willows, 
which were but breast-high. Among the men who had 
ridden up were Moore and Bates, and also the two 
famous scouts, Buffalo Bill — long a companion of 
Captain Moore — and California Joe, Custer's faithful 
follower. California Joe had spent almost all his 
life on the plains and in the mountains, as a hunter 
and Indian fighter; and when he saw the trooper 
about to rush into the thicket he called out to him 
not to do so, warning him of the danger. But the 
man was a very reckless fellow and he answered by 
jeering at the old hunter for his overcaution in being 
afraid of a crippled bear. California Joe made no 
further effort to dissuade him, remarking quietly: 
*' Very well, sonny, go in; it's your own affair." Miller 
then leaped off the bank on which they stood and strode 
into the thicket, holding his rifle at the port. Hardly 
had he taken three steps when the bear rose in front 
of him, roaring with rage and pain. It was so close that 
the man had no chance to fire. Its forearms hung 
useless and as it reared unsteadily on its hind legs, 
lunging forward at him, he seized it by the ears and 
strove to hold it back. His strength was very great, 
and he actually kept the huge head from his face and 
braced himself so that he was not overthrown; but 
the bear twisted its muzzle from side to side, biting 
and tearing the man's arms and shoulders. Another 
soldier jumping down slew the beast with a single bullet, 
and rescued his comrade; but though alive he was too 

294 



HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

badly hurt to recover and died after reaching the hos- 
pital. Buffalo Bill was given the bearskin, and I believe 
he has it now. 

The instances in which hunters who have rashly 
followed grizzlies into thick cover have been killed or 
severely mauled might be multiplied indefinitely. I 
have myself known of eight cases in which men have 
met their deaths in this manner. 

It occasionally happens that a cunning old grizzly 
will lie so close that the hunter almost steps on him; 
and he then rises suddenly with a loud, coughing growl 
and strikes down or seizes the man before the latter 
can fire off his rifle. More rarely a bear which is both 
vicious and crafty deliberately permits the hunter to 
approach fairly near to, or perhaps pass by, its hiding- 
place, and then suddenly charges him with such rapidity 
that he has barely time for the most hurried shot. 
The danger in such a case is of course great. 

Ordinarily, however, even in the brush, the bear's 
object is to slink away, not to fight, and very many 
are killed even under the most unfavorable circum- 
stances without accident. If an unwounded bear thinks 
itself unobserved it is not apt to attack; and in thick 
cover it is really astonishing to see how one of these 
large animals can hide, and how closely it will lie when 
there is danger. About twelve miles below my ranch 
there are some large river -bottoms and creek -bottoms 
covered with a matted mass of cottonwood, box-alders, 
buUberry bushes, rose-bushes, ash, wild plums, and 
other bushes. These bottoms have harbored bear ever 
since I first saw them; but, though often in company 
with a large party, I have repeatedly beaten through 
them, and though we must at times have been very near 
indeed to the game, we never so much as heard it run. 

295 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

When bears are shot, as they usually must be, in 
open timber or on the bare mountain, the risk is very 
much less. Hundreds may thus be killed with com- 
paratively little danger; yet even under these circum- 
stances they will often charge, and sometimes make 
their charge good. The spice of danger, especially to 
a man armed with a good repeating rifle, is only enough 
to add zest to the chase, and the chief triumph is in 
outwitting the wary quarry and getting within range. 
Ordinarily the only excitement is in the stalk, the bear 
doing nothing more than keep a keen lookout and man- 
ifest the utmost anxiety to get away. As is but natural, 
accidents occasionally occur; yet they are usually due 
more to some failure in man or weapon than to the 
prowess of the bear. A good hunter whom I once 
knew, at a time when he was living in Butte, received 
fatal injuries from a bear he attacked in open woodland. 
The beast charged after the first shot, but slackened 
its pace on coming almost up to the man. The latter's 
gun jammed, and as he was endeavoring to work it 
he kept stepping slowly back, facing the bear which 
followed a few yards distant, snarling and threatening. 
Unfortunately while thus walking backward the man 
struck a dead log and fell over it, whereupon the beast 
instantly sprang upon him and mortally wounded him 
before help arrived. 

On rare occasions men who are not at the time 
hunting it fall victims to the grizzly. This is usually 
because they stumble on it unawares and the animal 
attacks them more in fear than in anger. One such 
case, resulting fatally, occurred near my own ranch. 
The man walked almost over a bear while crossing a 
little point of brush, in a bend of the river, and was 
brained with a single blow of the paw. In another 

296 



HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

instance which came to my knowledge the man es- 
caped with a shaking up, and without even a fright. 
His name was Perkins, and he was out gathering 
huckleberries in the woods on a mountainside near 
Pend d' Oreille Lake. Suddenly he was sent flying head 
over heels, by a blow which completely knocked the 
breath out of his body; and so instantaneous was the 
whole affair that all he could ever recollect about it 
was getting a vague glimpse of the bear just as he 
was bowled over. WTien he came to he found himself 
lying some distance down the hillside, much shaken, 
and without his berry pail, which had rolled a hundred 
yards below him, but not otherwise the worse for his 
misadventure; while the footprints showed that the 
bear, after delivering the single hurried stroke at the 
unwitting disturber of its day-dreams, had run off up- 
hill as fast as it was able. 

A she bear with cubs is a proverbially dangerous 
beast; yet even under such conditions different grizzlies 
act in directly opposite ways. Some she grizzlies, when 
their cubs are young, but are able to follow them about, 
seem always worked up to the highest pitch of anxious 
and jealous rage, so that they are likely to attack un- 
provoked any intruder or even passer-by. Others when 
threatened by the hunter leave their cubs to their fate 
without a visible qualm of any kind, and seem to think 
only of their own safety. 

In 1882 Mr. Caspar W. Whitney, now of New York, 
met with a very singular adventure with a she bear 
and cub. He was in Harvard when I was, but left it 
and, like a good many other Harvard men of that time, 
took to cow-punching in the West. He went on a 
ranch in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, and was a 
keen hunter, especially fond of the chase of cougar, 

297 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

bear, and elk. One day while riding a stony mountain 
trail he saw a little grizzly cub watching him from the 
chaparral above, and he dismounted to try to capture 
it; his rifle was a 40-90 Sharp's. Just as he neared 
the cub, he heard a growl and caught a glimpse of the 
old she, and he at once turned uphill, and stood under 
some tall quaking aspens. From this spot he fired at 
and wounded the she, then seventy yards off; and she 
charged furiously. He hit her again, but as she kept 
coming like a thunderbolt he climbed hastily up the 
aspen, dragging his gun with him, as it had a strap. 
When the bear reached the foot of the aspen she reared, 
and bit and clawed the slender trunk, shaking it for a 
moment, and he shot her through the eye. Off she 
sprang for a few yards, and then spun round a dozen 
times, as if dazed or partially stunned; for the bullet 
had not touched the brain. Then the vindictive and 
resolute beast came back to the tree and again reared up 
against it; this time to receive a bullet that dropped her 
lifeless. Mr. Whitney then climbed down and walked 
to where the cub had been sitting as a looker-on. The 
little animal did not move until he reached out his 
hand; when it suddenly struck at him like an angry 
cat, dived into the bushes, and was seen no more. 

In the summer of 1888 an old-time trapper, named 
Charley Norton, while on Loon Creek, of the middle 
fork of the Salmon, meddled with a she and her cubs. 
She ran at him and with one blow of her paw almost 
knocked off his lower jaw; yet he recovered, and was 
alive when I last heard of him. 

Yet the very next spring the cowboys with my own 
wagon on the Little Missouri round-up killed a mother 
bear which made but little more fight than a coyote. 
She had two cubs, and was surprised in the early morn- 

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HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

ing on the prairie far from cover. There were eight or 
ten cowboys together at the time, just starting off on 
a long circle, and of course they all got down their 
ropes in a second, and putting spurs to their fiery little 
horses started toward the bears at a run, shouting 
and swinging their loops round their heads. For a 
moment the old she tried to bluster and made a half- 
hearted threat of charging; but her courage failed 
before the rapid onslaught of her yelling, rope-swinging 
assailants; and she took to her heels and galloped off, 
leaving the cubs to shift for themselves. The cowboys 
were close behind, however, and after half a mile's run 
she bolted into a shallow cave or hole in the side of a 
butte, where she stayed cowering and growling, until 
one of the men leaped off his horse, ran up to the edge 
of the hole, and killed her with a single bullet from his 
revolver, fired so close that the powder burned her hair. 
The unfortunate cubs were roped, and then so dragged 
about that they were speedily killed instead of being 
brought alive to camp, as ought to have been done. 

In the cases mentioned above the grizzly attacked 
only after having been itself assailed, or because it feared 
an assault, for itself or for its young. In the old days, 
however, it may almost be said that a grizzly was more 
apt to attack than to flee. Lewis and Clark and the 
early explorers who immediately succeeded them, as 
well as the first hunters and trappers, the "Rocky 
Mountain men" of the early decades of the present 
century, were repeatedly assailed in this manner; and 
not a few of the bear-hunters of that period found that it 
was unnecessary to take much trouble about approach- 
ing their quarry, as the grizzly was usually prompt 
to accept the challenge and to advance of its own ac- 
cord, as soon as it discovered the foe. All this is changed 

£99 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

now. Yet even at the present day an occasional 
vicious old bear may be found, in some far-off and little- 
trod fastness, which still keeps up the former habit of 
its kind. All old hunters have tales of this sort to 
relate, the prowess, cunning, strength, and ferocity of 
the grizzly being favorite topics for camp-fire talk 
throughout the Rockies; but in most cases it is not 
safe to accept these stories without careful sifting. 

Still, it is just as unsafe to reject them all. One of 
my own cowboys was once attacked by a grizzly, seem- 
ingly in pure wantonness. He was riding up a creek 
bottom, and had just passed a clump of rose and bull- 
berry bushes when his horse gave such a leap as almost 
to unseat him, and then darted madly forward. Turn- 
ing round in the saddle, to his utter astonishment he 
saw a large bear galloping after him, at the horse's 
heels. For a few jumps the race was close, then the 
horse drew away and the bear wheeled and went into 
a thicket of wild plums. The amazed and indignant 
cowboy, as soon as he could rein in his steed, drew his 
revolver and rode back to and around the thicket, 
endeavoring to provoke his late pursuer to come out 
and try conclusions on more equal terms; but prudent 
Ephraim had apparently repented of his freak of fero- 
cious bravado, and declined to leave the secure shelter 
of the jungle. 

Other attacks are of a much more explicable nature. 
Mr. Huffman, the photographer of Miles City, informed 
me that once when butchering some slaughtered elk 
he was charged twice by a she bear and two well-grown 
cubs. This was a piece of sheer bullying, undertaken 
solely with the purpose of driving away the man and 
feasting on the carcasses; for in each charge the three 
bears, after advancing with much blustering, roaring, 

300 



HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

and growling, halted just before coming to close quar- 
ters. In another instance a gentleman I once knew, 
a Mr. S. Carr, was charged by a grizzly from mere ill 
temper at being disturbed at meal-time. The man 
was riding up a valley; and the bear was at an elk 
carcass, near a clump of firs. As soon as it became 
aware of the approach of the horseman, while he was 
yet over a hundred yards distant, it jumped on the 
carcass, looked at him a moment, and then ran straight 
for him. There was no particular reason why it should 
have charged, for it was fat and in good trim, though 
when killed its head showed scars made by the teeth 
of rival grizzlies. Apparently it had been living so well, 
principally on flesh, that it had become quarrelsome; 
and perhaps its not oversweet disposition had been 
soured by combats with others of its own kind. In yet 
another case, a grizzly charged with even less excuse. 
An old trapper, from whom I occasionally bought fur, 
was toiling up a mountain pass when he spied a big 
bear sitting on his haunches on the hillside above. 
The trapper shouted and waved his cap; whereupon, 
to his amazement, the bear uttered a loud "wough" 
and charged straight down on him — only to fall a 
victim to misplaced boldness. 

I am even inclined to think that there have been 
wholly exceptional occasions when a grizzly has attacked 
a man with the deliberate purpose of making a meal 
of him; when, in other words, it has started on the 
career of a man-eater. At least, on any other theory 
I find it diflacult to account for an attack which once 
came to my knowledge. I was at Sand Point, on Pend 
d'Oreille Lake, and met some French and Meti trappers, 
then in town with their bales of beaver, otter, and sable. 
One of them, who gave his name as Baptiste Lamoche, 

301 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

had his head twisted over to one side, the result of the 
bite of a bear. When the accident occurred he was 
out on a trapping trip with two companions. They 
had pitched camp right on the shore of a cove in a 
little lake, and his comrades were off fishing in a dugout 
or pirogue. He himself was sitting near the shore, by 
a little lean-to, watching some beaver meat which was 
sizzling over the dying embers. Suddenly, and without 
warning, a great bear, which had crept silently up 
beneath the shadows of the tall evergreens, rushed at 
him, with a guttural roar, and seized him before he 
could rise to his feet. It grasped him with its jaws at 
the junction of the neck and shoulder, making the 
teeth meet through bone, sinew, and muscle; and 
turning, tracked off toward the forest, dragging with 
it the helpless and paralyzed victim. Luckily the two 
men in the canoe had just paddled round the point, 
in sight of, and close to, camp. The man in the bow, 
seeing the plight of their comrade, seized his rifle and 
fired at the bear. The bullet went through the beast's 
lungs, and it forthwith dropped its prey, and running 
off some two hundred yards, lay down on its side and 
died. The rescued man recovered full health and 
strength, but never again carried his head straight. 

Old hunters and mountain-men tell many stories, not 
only of malicious grizzlies thus attacking men in camp, 
but also of their even dogging the footsteps of some 
solitary hunter and killing him when the favorable 
opportunity occurs. Most of these tales are mere 
fables; but it is possible that in altogether exceptional 
instances they rest on a foundation of fact. One old 
hunter whom I knew told me such a story. He was 
a truthful old fellow, and there was no doubt that he 
believed what he said, and that his companion was 

302 



HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

actually killed by a bear; but it is probable that he 
was mistaken in reading the signs of his comrade's 
fate, and that the latter was not dogged by the bear 
at all, but stumbled on him and was slain in the sur- 
prise of the moment. 

At any rate, cases of wanton assaults by grizzlies are 
altogether out of the common. The ordinary hunter 
may live out his whole life in the wilderness and never 
know aught of a bear attacking a man unprovoked; 
and the great majority of bears are shot under circum- 
stances of no special excitement, as they either make 
no fight at all, or, if they do fight, are killed before 
there is any risk of their doing damage. If surprised 
on the plains, at some distance from timber or from 
badly broken ground, it is no uncommon feat for a 
single horseman to kill them with a revolver. Twice of 
late years it has been performed in the neighborhood 
of my ranch. In both instances the men were not 
hunters out after game, but simply cowboys, riding 
over the range in early morning in pursuance of their 
ordinary duties among the cattle. I knew both men 
and have worked with them on the round-up. Like 
most cowboys they carried 44-caliber Colt revolvers, 
and were accustomed to and fairly expert in their use, 
and they were mounted on ordinary cow-ponies — quick, 
wiry, plucky little beasts. In one case the bear was 
seen from quite a distance, lounging across a broad 
table -land. The cowboy, by taking advantage of a 
winding and rather shallow coulee, got quite close to 
him. He then scrambled out of the coulee, put spurs 
to his pony, and raced up to within fifty yards of the 
astonished bear ere the latter quite understood what 
it was that was running at him through the gray dawn. 
He made no attempt at fight, but ran at top speed 

303 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

toward a clump of brush not far off at the head of a 
creek. Before he could reach it, however, the galloping 
horseman was alongside, and fired three shots into his 
broad back. He did not turn, but ran on into the bushes 
and then fell over and died. 

In the other case the cowboy, a Texan, was mounted 
on a good cutting pony, a spirited, handy, agile little 
animal, but excitable, and with a habit of dancing, 
which rendered it difficult to shoot from its back. 
The man was with the round-up wagon, and had been 
sent off by himself to make a circle through some 
low, barren buttes, where it was not thought more 
than a few head of stock would be found. On rounding 
the corner of a small washout he almost ran over a 
bear which was feeding on the carcass of a steer that 
had died in an alkali hole. After a moment of stunned 
surprise the bear hurled himself at the intruder with 
furious impetuosity; while the cowboy, wheeling his 
horse on its haunches and dashing in the spurs, carried 
it just clear of his assailant's headlong rush. After 
a few springs he reined in and once more wheeled 
half round, having drawn his revolver, only to find the 
bear again charging and almost on him. This time he 
fired into it, near the joining of the neck and shoulder, 
the bullet going downward into the chest hollow; and 
again by a quick dash to one side he just avoided the 
rush of the beast and the sweep of its mighty fore paw. 
The bear then halted for a minute, and he rode close 
by it at a run, firing a couple of shots, which brought 
on another resolute charge. The ground was quite 
rugged and broken, but his pony was as quick on its 
feet as a cat, and never stumbled, even when going 
at full speed to avoid the bear's first mad rushes. It 
speedily became so excited, however, as to render it 

304 



HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

almost impossible for the rider to take aim. Sometimes 
he would come up close to the bear and wait for it to 
charge, which it would do, first at a trot, or rather rack, 
and then at a lumbering but swift gallop; and he would 
fire one or two shots before being forced to run. At 
other times, if the bear stood still in a good place, he 
would run by it, firing as he rode. He spent many 
cartridges, and though most of them were wasted, 
occasionally a bullet went home. The bear fought with 
the most savage courage, champing its bloody jaws, 
roaring with rage, and looking the very incarnation 
of evil fury. For some minutes it made no effort to 
flee, either charging or standing at bay. Then it began 
to move slowly toward a patch of ash and wild plums 
in the head of a coulee, some distance off. Its pursuer 
rode after it, and when close enough would push by it 
and fire, while the bear would spin quickly round and 
charge as fiercely as ever, though evidently beginning 
to grow weak. At last, when still a couple of hundred 
yards from cover, the man found he had used up all 
his cartridges, and then merely followed at a safe 
distance. The bear no longer paid heed to him, but 
walked slowly forward, swaying its great head from 
side to side, while the blood streamed from between 
its half-opened jaws. On reaching the cover he could 
tell by the waving of the bushes that it walked to the 
middle and then halted. A few minutes afterward 
some of the other cowboys rode up, having been at- 
tracted by the incessant firing. They surrounded the 
thicket, firing and throwing stones into the bushes. 
Finally, as nothing moved, they ventured in and found 
the indomitable grizzly warrior lying dead. 

Cowboys delight in nothing so much as the chance 
to show their skill as riders and ropers; and they always 

305 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

try to ride down and rope any wild animal they come 
across in favorable ground and close enough up. If a 
party of them meets a bear in the open they have 
great fun; and the struggle between the shouting, 
galloping rough-riders and their shaggy quarry is full 
of wild excitement and not unaccompanied by danger. 
The bear often throws the noose from his head so 
rapidly that it is a difficult matter to catch him; and 
his frequent charges scatter his tormentors in every 
direction, while the horses become wild with fright 
over the roaring, bristling beast — for horses seem to 
dread a bear more than any other animal. If the bear 
cannot reach cover, however, his fate is sealed. Sooner 
or later, the noose tightens over one leg, or perchance 
over the neck and fore paw, and as the rope straightens 
with a "pluck," the horse braces itself desperately and 
the bear tumbles over. Whether he regains his feet 
or not the cowboy keeps the rope taut; soon another 
noose tightens over a leg, and the bear is speedily 
rendered helpless. 

I have known of these feats being performed several 
times in northern Wyoming, although never in the 
immediate neighborhood of my ranch. Mr. Archibald 
Rogers's cow-hands have in this manner caught several 
bears, on or near his ranch on the Gray Bull, which 
flows into the Bighorn; and those of Mr. G. B. Grinnell 
have also occasionally done so. Any set of moderately 
good ropers and riders, who are accustomed to back one 
another up and act together, can accomplish the feat 
if they have smooth ground and plenty of room. It is, 
however, indeed a feat of skill and daring for a single 
man; and yet I have known of more than one instance 
in which it has been accomplished by some reckless 
knight of the rope and the saddle. One such occurred 

306 



HUNTING THE GRIZZLY 

in 1887 on the Flathead Reservation, the hero being a 
half-breed; and another in 1890 at the mouth of the 
Bighorn, where a cowboy roped, bound, and killed a 
large bear single-handed. 

My friend General *'Red" Jackson, of Bellemeade, 
in the pleasant mid-county of Tennessee, once did a 
feat which casts into the shade even the feats of the 
men of the lariat. General Jackson, who afterward 
became one of the ablest and most renowned of the 
Confederate cavalry leaders, was at the time a young 
officer in the Mounted Rifle Regiment, now known as 
the 3d United States Cavalry. It was some years 
before the Civil War, and the regiment was on duty in 
the Southwest, then the debatable land of Comanche 
and Apache. While on a scout after hostile Indians, 
the troops in their march roused a large grizzly which 
sped ojff across the plain in front of them. Strict 
orders had been issued against firing at game, because 
of the nearness of the Indians. Young Jackson was 
a man of great strength, a keen swordsman, who always 
kept the finest edge on his blade, and he was on a 
swift and mettled Kentucky horse, which luckily had 
but one eye. Riding at full speed he soon overtook 
the quarry. As the horse-hoofs sounded nearer, the 
grim bear ceased its flight, and whirling round stood at 
bay, raising itself on its hind legs and threatening its 
pursuer with bared fangs and spread claws. Carefully 
riding his horse so that its blind side should be toward 
the monster, the cavalryman swept by at a run, han- 
dling his steed with such daring skill that he just cleared 
the blow of the dreaded fore paw, while with one mighty 
sabre stroke he cleft the bear's skull, slaying the grin- 
ning beast as it stood upright. 



307 



XVI 



THE COUGAR 



No animal of the chase is so difficult to kill by fair 
still-hunting as the cougar — that beast of many names, 
known in the East as panther and painter, in the West 
as mountain-lion, in the Southwest as Mexican lion, 
and in the southern continent as lion and puma. 

Without hounds its pursuit is so uncertain that from 
the still-hunter's standpoint it hardly deserves to rank 
as game at all — though, by the way, it is itself a more 
skilful still-hunter than any human rival. It prefers 
to move abroad by night or at dusk; and in the daytime 
usually lies hid in some cave or tangled thicket where 
it is absolutely impossible even to stumble on it by 
chance. It is a beast of stealth and rapine, its great 
velvet paws never make a sound, and it is always on 
the watch whether for prey or for enemies, while it 
rarely leaves shelter even when it thinks itself safe. 
Its soft, leisurely movements and uniformity of color 
make it difficult to discover at best, and its extreme 
watchfulness helps it; but it is the cougar's reluctance 
to leave cover at any time, its habit of slinking off 
through the brush, instead of running in the open, 
when startled, and the way in which it lies motionless 
in its lair even when a man is within twenty yards, 
that render it so difficult to still-hunt. 

In fact it is next to impossible with any hope of 
success regularly to hunt the cougar without dogs or 
bait. Most cougars that are killed by still-hunters are 
shot by accident while the man is after other game. 

308 



THE COUGAR 

This has been my own experience. Although not com- 
mon, cougars are found near my ranch, where the ground 
is pecuHarly favorable for the solitary rifleman; and 
for ten years I have, off and on, devoted a day or two 
to their pursuit; but never successfully. One December 
a large cougar took up his abode on a densely wooded 
bottom two miles above the ranch-house. I did not 
discover his existence until I went there one evening 
to kill a deer, and found that he had driven all the deer 
off the bottom, having killed several, as well as a young 
heifer. Snow was falling at the time, but the storm 
was evidently almost over; the leaves were all off the 
trees and bushes; and I felt that next day there would 
be such a chance to follow the cougar as fate rarely 
offered. In the morning by dawn I was at the bottom, 
and speedily found his trail. Following it I came across 
his bed, among some cedars in a dark, steep gorge, 
where the buttes bordered the bottom. He had evi- 
dently just left it, and I followed his tracks all day. 
But I never caught a glimpse of him, and late in the 
afternoon I trudged wearily homeward. When I went 
out next morning I found that as soon as I abandoned 
the chase, my quarry, according to the uncanny habit 
sometimes displayed by his kind, coolly turned likewise, 
and deliberately dogged my footsteps to within a mile 
of the ranch-house; his round footprints being as clear 
as writing in the snow. 

This was the best chance of the kind that I ever 
had; but again and again I have found fresh signs of 
cougar, such as a lair which they had just left, game 
they had killed, or one of our venison caches which 
they had robbed, and have hunted for them all day 
without success. My failures were doubtless due in 
part to various shortcomings in hunter's craft on my 

309 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

own part; but equally without doubt they were mainly 
due to the quarry's wariness and its sneaking ways. 

I have seen a wild cougar alive but twice, and both 
times by chance. On one occasion one of my men, 
Merrifield, and I surprised one eating a skunk in a 
bullberry-patch; and by our own bungling frightened 
it away from its unsavory repast without getting a shot. 

On the other occasion luck befriended me. I was 
with a pack-train in the Rockies, and one day, feeling 
lazy, and as we had no meat in camp, I determined to 
try for deer by lying in wait beside a recently travelled 
game trail. The spot I chose was a steep, pine-clad 
slope leading down to a little mountain lake. I hid 
behind a breastwork of rotten logs, with a few young 
evergreens in front — an excellent ambush. A broad 
game trail slanted down the hill directly past me. I 
lay perfectly quiet for about an hour, listening to the 
murmur of the pine forests, and the occasional call of 
a jay or woodpecker, and gazing eagerly along the trail 
in the waning light of the late afternoon. Suddenly, 
without noise or warning of any kind, a cougar stood in 
the trail before me. The unlooked-for and unheralded 
approach of the beast was fairly ghostlike. With its 
head lower than its shoulders, and its long tail twitching, 
it slouched down the path, treading as softly as a 
kitten. I waited until it had passed and then fired into 
the short ribs, the bullet ranging forward. Throwing 
its tail up in the air, and giving a bound, the cougar 
galloped off over a slight ridge. But it did not go far; 
within a hundred yards I found it stretched on its side, 
its jaws still working convulsively. 

The true way to hunt the cougar is to follow it with 
dogs. If the chase is conducted in this fashion it is 
very exciting, and resembles on a larger scale the ordi- 

310 



THE COUGAR 

nary method of hunting the wildcat or small lynx, as 
practised by the sport-loving planters of the Southern 
States. With a very little training, hounds readily and 
eagerly pursue the cougar, showing in this kind of chase 
none of the fear and disgust they are so prone to exhibit 
when put on the trail of the certainly no more dangerous 
wolf. The cougar, when the hounds are on its track, at 
first runs, but when hard-pressed takes to a tree or 
possibly comes to bay in thick cover. Its attention is 
then so taken up with the hounds that it can usually 
be approached and shot without much difficulty; though 
some cougars break bay when the hunters come near 
and again make off, when they can only be stopped by 
many large and fierce hounds. Hounds are often killed 
in these fights; and if hungry a cougar will pounce on 
any dog for food; yet, as I have elsewhere related, I 
know of one instance in which a small pack of big, 
savage hounds killed a cougar unassisted. General 
Wade Hampton, who with horse and hound has been 
the mightiest hunter America has ever seen, informs 
me that he has killed with his pack some sixteen cougars, 
during the fifty years he has hunted in South Carolina 
and Mississippi. I believe they were all killed in the 
latter State. General Hampton's hunting has been 
chiefly for bear and deer, though his pack also follows 
the lynx and the gray fox; and, of course, if good 
fortune throws either a wolf or a cougar in his way it 
is followed as the game of all others. All the cougars 
he killed were either treed or brought to bay in a cane- 
brake by the hounds; and they often handled the pack 
very roughly in the death struggle. He found them 
much more dangerous antagonists than the black bear 
when assailed with the hunting-knife, a weapon of which 
he was very fond. However, if his pack had held a 

311 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

few very large, savage dogs, put in purely for fighting 
when the quarry was at bay, I think the danger would 
have been minimized. 

General Hampton followed his game on horseback; 
but in following the cougar with dogs this is by no 
means always necessary. Thus Colonel Cecil Clay, of 
Washington, killed a cougar in West Virginia, on foot 
with only three or four hounds. The dogs took the cold 
trail, and he had to run many miles over the rough, 
forest-clad mountains after them. Finally they drove 
the cougar up a tree; where he found it, standing among 
the branches, in a half-erect position, its hind feet on 
one limb and its fore feet on another, while it glared 
down at the dogs, and switched its tail from side to side. 
He shot it through both shoulders, and down it came 
in a heap, whereupon the dogs jumped in and worried 
it, for its fore legs were useless, though it managed 
to catch one dog in its jaws and bite him severely. 

A wholly exceptional instance of the kind was related 
to me by my old hunting friend Willis. In his youth, 
in southwest Missouri, he knew a half-witted "poor 
white " who was very fond of hunting coons. He hunted 
at night, armed with an axe, and accompanied by his 
dog Penny, a large, savage, half-starved cur. One dark 
night the dog treed an animal which he could not see; 
so he cut down the tree, and immediately Penny 
jumped in and grabbed the beast. The man sung out, 
"Hold on. Penny," seeing that the dog had seized some 
large wild animal; the next moment the brute knocked 
the dog endways, and at the same instant the man 
split open its head with the axe. Great was his astonish- 
ment, and greater still the astonishment of the neigh- 
bors next day, when it was found that he had actually 
killed a cougar. These great cats often take to trees 

312 



THE COUGAR 

in a perfectly foolish manner. My friend, the hunter 
Woody, in all his thirty years' experience in the wilds 
never killed but one cougar. He was lying out in 
camp with two dogs at the time; it was about midnight, 
the fire was out, and the night was pitch-black. He 
was roused by the furious barking of his two dogs, who 
had charged into the gloom, and were apparently baying 
at something in a tree close by. He kindled the fire, 
and to his astonishment found the thing in the tree to 
be a cougar. Coming close underneath he shot it with 
his revolver; thereupon it leaped down, ran some forty 
yards, and climbed up another tree, where it died among 
the branches. 

If cowboys come across a cougar in open ground 
they invariably chase and try to rope it — as indeed 
they do with any wild animal. I have known several 
instances of cougars being roped in this way; in one 
the animal was brought into camp alive by two strap- 
ping cow-punchers. 

The cougar sometimes stalks its prey, and sometimes 
lies in wait for it beside a game trail or drinking-pool — 
very rarely indeed does it crouch on the limb of a tree. 
When excited by the presence of game it is sometimes 
very bold. Willis once fired at some bighorn sheep, 
on a steep mountainside; he missed, and immediately 
after his shot a cougar made a dash into the midst of the 
flying band, hoping to secure a victim. The cougar 
roams over long distances, and often changes its hunt- 
ing-ground, perhaps remaining in one place two or three 
months until the game is exhausted, and then shifting 
to another. When it does not lie in wait it usually 
spends most of the night, winter and summer, in 
prowling restlessly around the places where it thinks it 
may come across prey, and it will patiently follow an 

313 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

animal's trail. There is no kind of game, save the 
full-grown grizzly and buffalo, which it does not at 
times assail and master. It readily snaps up grizzly 
cubs or buffalo calves; and in at least one instance, I 
have known of it springing on, slaying, and eating a 
full-grown wolf. I presume the latter was taken by 
surprise. On the other hand, the cougar itself has to 
fear the big timber-wolves when maddened by the 
winter hunger and gathered in small parties; while a 
large grizzly would of course be an overmatch for it 
twice over, though its superior agility puts it beyond 
the grizzly's power to harm it, unless by some unlucky 
chance taken in a cave. Nor could a cougar over- 
come a bull moose, or a bull elk either, if the latter's 
horns were grown, save by taking it unawares. By 
choice, with such big game, its victims are the cows 
and young. The pronghorn rarely comes within reach 
of its spring; but it is the dreaded enemy of bighorn, 
white goat, and every kind of deer, while it also preys 
on all the smaller beasts, such as foxes, coons, rabbits, 
beavers, and even gophers, rats, and mice. It some- 
times makes a thorny meal of the porcupine, and if 
suflSciently hungry attacks and eats its smaller cousin 
the lynx. It is not a brave animal; nor does it run 
its prey down in open chase. It always makes its 
attacks by stealth and if possible from behind, and 
relies on two or three tremendous springs to bring it 
on the doomed creature's back. It uses its claws as 
well as its teeth in holding and killing the prey. If 
possible it always seizes a large animal by the throat, 
whereas the wolf's point of attack is more often the 
haunch or flank. Small deer or sheep it will often 
knock over and kill, merely using its big paws; some- 
times it breaks their necks. It has a small head com- 

314 



THE COUGAR 

pared to the jaguar, and its bite is much less dangerous. 
Hence, as compared to its larger and bolder relative, 
it places more trust in its claws and less in its teeth. 

Though the cougar prefers woodland, it is not nec- 
essarily a beast of the dense forests only; for it is 
found in all the plains country, living in the scanty 
timber belts which fringe the streams, or among the 
patches of brush in the Bad Lands. The persecution 
of hunters, however, always tends to drive it into the 
most thickly wooded and broken fastnesses of the 
mountains. The she has from one to three kittens, 
brought forth in a cave or a secluded lair, under a 
dead log or in very thick brush. It is said that the 
old hes kill the small male kittens when they get a 
chance. They certainly at times during the breeding 
season fight desperately among themselves. Cougars 
are very solitary beasts; it is rare to see more than 
one at a time, and then only a mother and young, or 
a mated male and female. \Miile she has kittens, the 
mother is doubly destructive to game. The young 
begin to kill for themselves very early. The first fall, 
after they are born, they attack large game, and from 
ignorance are bolder in making their attacks than their 
parents; but they are clumsy and often let the prey 
escape. Like all cats, cougars are comparatively easy 
to trap, much more so than beasts of the dog kind, such 
as the fox and wolf. 

They are silent animals; but old hunters say that 
at mating time the males call loudly, while the females 
have a very distinct answer. They are also sometimes 
noisy at other seasons. I am not sure that I ever heard 
one; but one night, while camped in a heavily timbered 
coulee near Kildeer Mountains, where, as their foot- 
prints showed, the beasts were plentiful, I twice heard 

315 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

a loud, wailing scream ringing through the impenetrable 
gloom which shrouded the hills around us. My com- 
panion, an old plainsman, said that this was the cry 
of the cougar prowling for its prey. Certainly no man 
could well listen to a stranger and wilder sound. 

Ordinarily the rifleman is in no danger from a 
hunted cougar; the beast's one idea seems to be flight, 
and even if its assailant is very close, it rarely charges 
if there is any chance for escape. Yet there are oc- 
casions when it will show fight. In the spring of 1890, 
a man with whom I had more than once worked on 
the round-up — though I never knew his name — was 
badly mauled by a cougar near my ranch. He was 
hunting with a companion and they unexpectedly came 
on the cougar on a shelf of sandstone above their 
heads, only some ten feet off. It sprang down on the 
man, mangled him with teeth and claws for a moment, 
and then ran away. Another man I knew, a hunter 
named Ed. Smith, who had a small ranch near Helena, 
was once charged by a wounded cougar; he received 
a couple of deep scratches, but was not seriously hurt. 

Many old frontiersmen tell tales of the cougar's 
occasionally itself making the attack and dogging to 
his death some unfortunate wayfarer. Many others 
laugh such tales to scorn. It is certain that if such at- 
tacks occur they are altogether exceptional, being 
indeed of such extreme rarity that they may be entirely 
disregarded in practice. I should have no more hesi- 
tation in sleeping out in a wood where there were 
cougars, or walking through it after nightfall, than I 
should have if the cougars were tomcats. 

Yet it is foolish to deny that in exceptional instances 
attacks may occur. Cougars vary wonderfully in size, 
and no less in temper. Indeed, I think that by nature 

316 



THE COUGAR 

they are as ferocious and bloodthirsty as they are 
cowardly; and that their habit of sometimes dogging 
wayfarers for miles is due to a desire for bloodshed 
which they lack the courage to realize. In the old days, 
when all wild beasts were less shy than at present, 
there was more danger from the cougar; and this was 
especially true in the dark cane-brakes of some of the 
Southern States, where the man a cougar was most 
likely to encounter was a nearly naked and unarmed 
negro. General Hampton tells me that near his Mis- 
sissippi plantation, many years ago, a negro who was 
one of a gang engaged in building a railroad through 
low and wet ground was waylaid and killed by a cougar 
late one night as he was walking alone through the 
swamp. 

I knew two men in Missoula who were once attacked 
by cougars in a very curious manner. It was in January, 
and they were walking home through the snow after 
a hunt, each carrying on his back the saddle, haunches, 
and hide of a deer he had slain. Just at dusk, as they 
were passing through a narrow ravine, the man in 
front heard his partner utter a sudden loud call for 
help. Turning, he was dumfounded to see the man 
lying on his face in the snow, with a cougar which had 
evidently just knocked him down standing over him, 
grasping the deer meat, while another cougar was 
galloping up to assist. Swinging his rifle round, he shot 
the first one in the brain, and it dropped motionless, 
whereat the second halted, wheeled, and bounded into 
the woods. His companion was not in the least hurt 
or even frightened. The cougars were not full grown, 
but young of the year. 

Now in this case I do not believe the beasts had any 
real intention of attacking the men. They were young 

317 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

animals, bold, stupid, and very hungry. The smell of 
the raw meat excited them beyond control, and they 
probably could not make out clearly what the men 
were, as they walked bent under their burdens, with 
the deerskins on their backs. Evidently the cougars 
were only trying to get at the venison. 

In 1886 a cougar killed an Indian near Flathead 
Lake. Two Indians were hunting together on horse- 
back when they came on the cougar. It fell at once 
to their shots, and they dismounted and ran toward it. 
Just as they reached it it came to, and seized one, 
killing him instantly with a couple of savage bites in 
the throat and chest; it then raced after the other, and, 
as he sprang on his horse, struck him across the but- 
tocks, inflicting a deep but not dangerous scratch. I 
saw this survivor a year later. He evinced great re- 
luctance to talk of the event, and insisted that the 
thing which had slain his companion was not really a 
cougar at all, but a devil. 

A she cougar does not often attempt to avenge the 
loss of her young, but sometimes she does. A re- 
markable instance of the kind happened to my friend 
Professor John Bach McMaster, in 1875. He was 
camped near the head of Green River, Wyoming. One 
afternoon he found a couple of cougar kittens, and took 
them into camp; they were clumsy, playful, friendly 
little creatures. The next afternoon he remained in 
camp with the cook. Happening to look up, he sud- 
denly spied the mother cougar running noiselessly down 
on them, her eyes glaring and tail twitching. Snatching 
up his rifle, he killed her when she was barely twenty 
yards distant. 

A ranchman, named Trescott, who was at one time 
my neighbor, told me that while he was living on a 

318 



THE COUGAR 

sheep-farm in the Argentine, he found pumas very- 
common , and killed many. They were very destructive 
to sheep and colts, but were singularly cowardly when 
dealing with men. Not only did they never attack 
human beings, under any stress of hunger, but they 
made no effective resistance when brought to bay, 
merely scratching and cuffing like a big cat; so that, 
if found in a cave, it was safe to creep in and shoot 
them with a revolver. Jaguars, on the contrary, were 
very dangerous antagonists. 



319 



XVII 

A PECCARY-HUNT ON THE NUECES 

In the United States the peccary is only found in 
the southernmost corner of Texas. In April, 1892, I 
made a flying visit to the ranch country of this region, 
starting from the town of Uvalde with a Texan friend, 
Mr. John Moore. My trip being very hurried, I had 
but a couple of days to devote to hunting. 

Our first halting-place was at a ranch on the Frio; 
a low, wooden building, of many rooms, with open 
galleries between them, and verandas round about. 
The country was in some respects like, in others 
strangely unlike, the northern plains with which I was 
so well acquainted. It was for the most part covered 
with a scattered growth of tough, stunted mesquite- 
trees, not dense enough to be called a forest and yet 
sufiiciently close to cut off the view. It was very dry, 
even as compared with the northern plains. The bed 
of the Frio was filled with coarse gravel, and for the 
most part dry as a bone on the surface, the water 
seeping through underneath and only appearing in oc- 
casional deep holes. These deep holes or ponds never 
fail, even after a year's drouth; they were filled with 
fish. One lay quite near the ranch-house, under a bold 
rocky bluff; at its edge grew giant cypress-trees. In 
the hollows and by the watercourses were occasional 
groves of pecans, live-oaks, and elms. Strange birds 
hopped among the bushes; the chaparral-cock — a big, 
handsome ground-cuckoo of remarkable habits, much 
given to preying on small snakes and lizards — ran 
over the ground with extraordinary rapidity. Beauti- 

320 



A PECCARY-HUNT ON THE NUECES 

ful swallow-tailed king-birds with rosy plumage 
perched on the tops of the small trees, and soared and 
flitted in graceful curves above them. Blackbirds of 
many kinds scuttled in flocks about the corrals and 
outbuildings around the ranches. Mocking-birds 
abounded, and were very noisy, singing almost all 
the daytime, but with their usual irritating inequality 
of performance, wonderfully musical and powerful 
snatches of song being interspersed with imitations of 
other bird notes and disagreeable squalling. Through- 
out the trip I did not hear one of them utter the beauti- 
ful love-song in which they sometimes indulge at night. 

The country was all under wire fence, unlike the 
northern regions, the pastures, however, being some- 
times many miles across. When we reached the Frio 
ranch a herd of a thousand cattle had just been gathered, 
and two or three hundred beeves and young stock were 
being cut out to be driven northward over the trail. 
The cattle were worked in pens much more than in the 
North, and on all the ranches there were chutes with 
steering-gates, by means of which the individuals of a 
herd could be dexterously shifted into various corrals. 
The branding of the calves was done ordinarily in one 
of these corrals and on foot, the calf being always roped 
by both fore legs; otherwise the work of the cow- 
punchers was much like that of their brothers in the 
North. As a whole, however, they were distinctly more 
proficient with the rope, and at least half of them were 
Mexicans, 

There were some bands of wild cattle living only in 
the densest timber of the river-bottoms, which were 
literally as wild as deer, and moreover very fierce and 
dangerous. The pursuit of these was exciting and 
hazardous in the extreme. The men who took part in 

321 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

it showed not only the utmost daring but the most 
consummate horsemanship and wonderful skill in the 
use of the rope, the coil being hurled with the force and 
precision of an iron quoit; a single man speedily over- 
taking, roping, throwing, and binding down the fiercest 
steer or bull. 

There had been many peccaries, or, as the Mexicans 
and cow-punchers of the border usually call them, 
javalinas, round this ranch a few years before the date 
of my visit. Until 1886, or thereabout, these little 
wild hogs were not much molested, and abounded in 
the dense chaparral around the lower Rio Grande. 
In that year, however, it was suddenly discovered that 
their hides had a market value, being worth four bits — 
that is, half a dollar — apiece; and many Mexicans and 
not a few shiftless Texans went into the business of 
hunting them as a means of livelihood. They were 
more easily killed than deer, and, as a result, they were 
speedily exterminated in many localities where they 
had formerly been numerous, and even where they were 
left were to be found only in greatly diminished num- 
bers. On this particular Frio ranch the last little band 
had been killed nearly a year before. There were three 
of them, a boar and two sows, and a couple of the cow- 
boys stumbled on them early one morning while out 
with a dog. After half a mile's chase the three pec- 
caries ran into a hollow pecan-tree, and one of the 
cowboys, dismounting, improvised a lance by tying his 
knife to the end of a pole, and killed them all. 

Many anecdotes were related to me of what they had 
done in the old days when they were plentiful on the 
ranch. They were then usually found in parties of 
from twenty to thirty, feeding in the dense chaparral, 
the sows rejoining the herd with the young very soon 

322 



A PECCARY-HUNT ON THE NUECES 

after the birth of the latter, each sow usually having 
but one or two at a litter. At night they sometimes 

k lay in the thickest cover, but always, where possible, 
preferred to house in a cave or big hollow log, one in- 
variably remaining as a sentinel close to the mouth, 
looking out. If this sentinel were shot, another would 
almost certainly take his place. They were subject to 
freaks of stupidity, and were pugnacious to a degree. 
Not only would they fight if molested, but they would 
often attack entirely without provocation. 

Once my friend Moore himself, while out with another 

i cowboy on horseback, was attacked in sheer wanton- 
ness by a drove of these little wild hogs. The two men 
were riding by a grove of live-oaks along a wood-cutter's 
cart track, and were assailed without a moment's warn- 
ing. The little creatures completely surrounded them, 
cutting fiercely at the horses' legs and jumping up at 
the riders' feet. The men, drawing their revolvers, 
dashed through and were closely followed by their 
pursuers for three or four hundred yards, although they 
fired right and left with good effect. Both of the horses 
were badly cut. On another occasion the bookkeeper 
of the ranch walked off to a water-hole but a quarter of 
a mile distant, and came face to face with a peccary 
on a cattle-trail, where the brush was thick. Instead 
of getting out of his way the creature charged him 
instantly, drove him up a small mesquite-tree, and kept 
him there for nearly two hours, looking up at him and 
champing its tusks. 

I spent two days hunting round this ranch but saw 
no peccary sign whatever, although deer were quite 
plentiful. Parties of wild geese and sand-hill cranes 
occasionally flew overhead. At nightfall the poor- 
wills wailed everywhere through the woods, and coyotes 

323 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

yelped and yelled, while in the early morning the wild 
turkeys gobbled loudly from their roosts in the tops 
of the pecan-trees. 

Having satisfied myself that there were no javalinas 
left on the Frio ranch, and being nearly at the end of 
my holiday, I was about to abandon the effort to get 
any when a passing cowman happened to mention the 
fact that some were still to be found on the Nueces 
River thirty miles or thereabout to the southward. 
Thither I determined to go, and next morning Moore 
and I started in a buggy drawn by a redoubtable horse, 
named Jim Swinger, which we were allowed to use be- 
cause he bucked so under the saddle that nobody on 
the ranch could ride him. We drove six or seven hours 
across the dry, waterless plains. There had been a 
heavy frost a few days before, which had blackened 
the budding mesquite-trees, and their twigs still showed 
no signs of sprouting. Occasionally we came across 
open spaces where there was nothing but short brown 
grass. In most places, however, the leafless, sprawling 
mesquites were scattered rather thinly over the ground, 
cutting off an extensive view and merely adding to the 
melancholy barrenness of the landscape. The road 
was nothing but a couple of dusty wheel tracks; the 
ground was parched, and the grass cropped close by 
the gaunt, starved cattle. As we drove along buzzards 
and great hawks occasionally soared overhead. Now 
and then we passed lines of wild-looking long-horned 
steers, and once we came on the grazing horses of a cow 
outfit, just preparing to start northward over the trail 
to the fattening pastures. Occasionally we encoun- 
tered one or two cow-punchers; either Texans, habited 
exactly like their brethren in the North, with broad- 
brimmed gray hats, blue shirts, silk neckerchiefs, and 

324 



A PECCARY-HUNT ON THE NUECES 

leather leggings; or else Mexicans, more gaudily dressed, 
and wearing peculiarly stiff, very broad-brimmed hats, 
with conical tops. 

Toward the end of our ride we got where the ground 
was more fertile and there had recently been a sprin- 
kling of rain. Here we came across wonderful flower 
prairies. In one spot I kept catching glimpses through 
the mesquite-trees of lilac stretches which I had first 
thought must be ponds of water. On coming nearer 
they proved to be acres on acres thickly covered with 
beautiful lilac-colored flowers. Farther on we came to 
where broad bands of red flowers covered the ground 
for many furlongs; then their places were taken by 
yellow blossoms, elsewhere by white. Generally each 
band or patch of ground was covered densely by 
flowers of the same color, making a great vivid streak 
across the landscape; but in places they were mixed 
together, red, yellow, and purple, interspersed in 
patches and curving bands, carpeting the prairie in a 
strange, bright pattern. 

Finally toward evening we reached the Nueces. 
Where we struck it first the bed was dry, except in 
occasional deep, malarial-looking pools, but a short 
distance below there began to be a running current. 
Great blue herons were stalking beside these pools, and 
from one we flushed a white ibis. In the woods were 
reddish cardinal-birds, much less brilliant in plumage 
than the true cardinals and the scarlet tanagers; and 
yellow-headed titmice which had already built large 
domed nests. 

In the valley of the Nueces itself, the brush grew 
thick. There were great groves of pecan-trees, and 
evergreen live-oaks stood in many places, long, wind- 
shaken tufts of gray moss hanging from their limbs. 

325 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

Many of the trees in the wet spots were of giant size, 
and the whole landscape was semitropical in character. 
High on a bluff shoulder overlooking the course of the 
river was perched the ranch-house toward which we 
were bending our steps; and here we were received 
with the hearty hospitality characteristic of the ranch 
country everywhere. 

The son of the ranchman, a tall, well-built young 
fellow, told me at once that there were peccaries in 
the neighborhood, and that he had himself shot one 
but two or three days before, and volunteered to lend 
us horses and pilot us to the game on the morrow, with 
the help of his two dogs. The last were big black 
curs with, as we were assured, *' considerable hound" 
in them. One was at the time staying at the ranch- 
house, the other was four or five miles off with a Mex- 
ican goat-herder, and it was arranged that early in the 
morning we should ride down to the latter place, 
taking the first dog with us and procuring his com- 
panion when we reached the goat-herder's house. 

We started after breakfast, riding powerful cow- 
ponies, well trained to gallop at full speed through 
the dense chaparral. The big black hound slouched 
at our heels. We rode down the banks of the Nueces, 
crossing and recrossing the stream. Here and there 
were long, deep pools in the bed of the river, where 
rushes and lilies grew and huge mailed garfish swam 
slowly just beneath the surface of the water. Once 
my two companions stopped to pull a mired cow out 
of a slough, hauling with ropes from their saddle-horns. 
In places there were half-dry pools, out of the regular 
current of the river, the water green and fetid. The 
trees were very tall and large. The streamers of pale- 
gray moss hung thickly from the branches of the live- 

326 



A PECCARY-HUNT ON THE NUECES 

oaks, and when many trees thus draped stood close 
together they bore a strangely mournful and desolate 
look. 

We finally found the queer little hut of the Mexican 
goat-herder in the midst of a grove of giant pecans. 
On the walls were nailed the skins of different beasts, 
raccoons, wildcats, and the tree-civet, with its ringed 
tail. The Mexican's brown wife and children were in 
the hut, but the man himself and the goats were off 
in the forest, and it took us three or four hours' search 
before we found him. Then it was nearly noon, and 
we lunched in his hut, a square building of split logs, 
with bare earth floor, and roof of clapboards and bark. 
Our lunch consisted of goat's meat and jpaii de mais. 
The Mexican, a broad-chested man with a stolid Indian 
face, was evidently quite a sportsman, and had two 
or three half-starved hounds, besides the funny, hair- 
less little house-dogs, of which Mexicans seem so fond. 

Having borrowed the javalina hound of which we 
were in search, we rode off in quest of our game, the 
two dogs trotting gaily ahead. The one which had 
been living at the ranch had evidently fared well, and 
was very fat; the other was little else but skin and bone, 
but as alert and knowing as any New York street boy, 
with the same air of disreputable capacity. It was 
this hound which always did most in finding the java- 
linas and bringing them to bay, his companion's chief 
use being to make a noise and lend the moral support 
of his presence. 

We rode away from the river on the dry uplands, 
where the timber, though thick, was small, consisting 
almost exclusively of the thorny mesquites. Mixed 
among them were prickly-pears, standing as high as 
our heads on horseback, and Spanish bayonets, looking 

327 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

in the distance like small palms; and there were many 
other kinds of cactus, all with poisonous thorns. Two 
or three times the dogs got on an old trail and rushed 
off giving tongue, whereat we galloped madly after 
them, ducking and dodging through and among the 
clusters of spine-bearing trees and cactus, not without 
getting a considerable number of thorns in our hands 
and legs. It was very dry and hot. Wliere the java- 
linas live in droves in the river-bottoms they often 
drink at the pools ; but when some distance from water 
they seem to live quite comfortably on the prickly- 
pear, slaking their thirst by eating its hard, juicy fibre. 

At last, after several false alarms, and gallops which 
led to nothing, when it lacked but an hour of sundown 
we struck a band of five of the little wild hogs. They 
were running off through the mesquites with a peculiar 
hopping or bounding motion, and we all, dogs and men, 
tore after them instantly. 

Peccaries are very fast for a few hundred yards, but 
speedily tire, lose their wind, and come to bay. Almost 
immediately one of these, a sow, as it turned out, 
wheeled and charged at Moore as he passed, Moore 
never seeing her but keeping on after another. The 
sow then stopped and stood still, chattering her teeth 
savagely, and I jumped off my horse and dropped her 
dead with a shot in the spine over the shoulders. 
Moore meanwhile had dashed off after his pig in one 
direction, and killed the little beast with a shot from 
the saddle when it had come to bay, turning and going 
straight at him. Two of the peccaries got oft'; the 
remaining one, a rather large boar, was followed by the 
two dogs, and as soon as I had killed the sow I leaped 
again on my horse and made after them, guided by 
the yelping and baying. In less than a quarter of a mile 

328 



A PECCARY-HUNT ON THE NUECES 

they were on his haunches, and he wheeled and stood 
under a bush, charging at them when they came near 
him, and once catching one, inflicting an ugly cut. All 
the while his teeth kept going like castanets, with a 
rapid champing sound. I ran up close and killed him 
by a shot through the back-bone where it joined the 
neck. His tusks were fine. 

The few minutes' chase on horseback was great fun, 
and there was a certain excitement in seeing the fierce 
little creatures come to bay; but the true way to kill 
these peccaries would be with the spear. They could 
often be speared on horseback, and where this was 
impossible, by using dogs to bring them to bay they 
could readily be killed on foot; though, as they are 
very active, absolutely fearless, and inflict a most 
formidable bite, it would usually be safest to have two 
men go at one together. Peccaries are not diflScult 
beasts to kill, because their short wind and their pug- 
nacity make them come to bay before hounds so 
quickly. Two or three good dogs can bring to a halt 
a herd of considerable size. They then all stand in a 
bunch, or else with their sterns against a bank, chat- 
tering their teeth at their antagonists. When angry 
and at bay, they get their legs close together, their 
shoulders high, and their bristles all ruffled and look 
the very incarnation of anger, and they fight with 
reckless indifference to the very last. Hunters usually 
treat them with a certain amount of caution; but, as 
a matter of fact, I know of but one case where a man 
was hurt by them. He had shot at and w^ounded one, 
was charged both by it and by its two companions, 
and started to climb a tree; but as he drew himself 
from the ground, one sprang at him and bit him through 
the calf, inflicting a very severe wound. I have known 

329 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

of several cases of horses being cut, however, and dogs 
are very commonly killed. Indeed, a dog new to the 
business is almost certain to get very badly scarred, 
and no dog that hunts steadily can escape without 
some injury. If it runs in right at the heads of the 
animals, the probabilities are that it will get killed; 
and, as a rule, even two good-sized hounds cannot 
kill a peccary, though it is no larger than either of 
them» However, a wary, resolute, hard-biting dog of 
good size speedily gets accustomed to the chase and 
can kill a peccary single-handed, seizing it from behind 
and worrying it to death, or watching its chance and 
grabbing it by the back of the neck where it joins the 
head. 

Peccaries have delicately moulded short legs, and their 
feet are small, the tracks looking peculiarly dainty in 
consequence. Hence, they do not swim well, though 
they take to the water if necessary. They feed on 
roots, prickly-pears, nuts, insects, lizards, etc. They 
usually keep entirely separate from the droves of half- 
wild swine that are so often found in the same neigh- 
borhoods; but in one case, on this very ranch where 
I was staying, a peccary deliberately joined a party of 
nine pigs and associated with them. When the owner 
of the pigs came up to them one day the peccary 
manifested great suspicion at his presence, and finally 
sidled close up and threatened to attack him, so that 
he had to shoot it. The ranchman's son told me that 
he had never but once had a peccary assail him un- 
provoked, and even in this case it was his dog that 
was the object of attack, the peccary rushing out at 
it as it followed him home one evening through the 
chaparral. Even around this ranch the peccaries had 
very greatly decreased in numbers, and the survivors 

330 



A PECCARY-HUNT ON THE NUECES 

were learning some caution. In the old days it had 
been no uncommon thing for a big band to attack, 
entirely of their own accord, and keep a hunter up 
a tree for hours at a time. 



331 



XVIII 

HUNTING WITH HOUNDS 

In hunting American big game with hounds, several 
entirely distinct methods are pursued. The true wil- 
derness hunters, the men who in the early days lived 
alone in, or moved in parties through, the Indian- 
haunted solitudes, like their successors of to-day, rarely 
made use of a pack of hounds, and, as a rule, did not 
use dogs at all. In the Eastern forests occasionally an 
old-time hunter would own one or two track-hounds, 
slow, with a good nose, intelligent and obedient, of 
use mainly in following wounded game. Some Rocky 
Mountain hunters nowadays employ the same kind of 
a dog, but the old-time trappers of the great plains and 
the Rockies led such wandering lives of peril and 
hardship that they could not readily take dogs with 
them. The hunters of the Alleghanies and the Adiron- 
dacks have, however, always used hounds to drive deer, 
killing the animal in the water or at a runway. 

As soon, however, as the old wilderness-hunter type 
passes away, hounds come into use among his successors, 
the rough border settlers of the backwoods and the 
plains. Every such settler is apt to have four or five 
large mongrel dogs with hound blood in them, which 
serve to drive off beasts of prey from the sheepfold and 
cattle-shed, and are also used, when the occasion suits, 
in regular hunting, whether after bear or deer. 

Many of the Southern planters have always kept 
packs of foxhounds, which are used in the chase, not 
only of the gray and the red fox, but also of the deer, 
the black bear, and the wildcat. The fox the dogs 

332 



HUNTING WITH HOUNDS 

themselves run down and kill, but as a rule in this 
kind of hunting, when after deer, bear, or even wild- 
cat, the hunters carry guns with them on their horses, 
and endeavor either to get a shot at the fleeing animal 
by hard and dexterous riding or else to kill the cat 
when treed or the bear when it comes to bay. Such 
hunting is great sport. 

Killing driven game by lying in wait for it to pass 
is the very poorest kind of sport that can be called 
legitimate. This is the way the deer is usually killed 
with hounds in the East. In the North the red fox is 
often killed in somewhat the same manner, being fol- 
lowed by a slow hound and shot at as he circles before 
the dog. Although this kind of fox-hunting is inferior 
to hunting on horseback, it nevertheless has its merits, 
as the man must walk and run well, shoot with some 
accuracy, and show considerable knowledge both of 
the country and of the habits of the game. 

During the last score of years an entirely different 
type of dog from the foxhound has firmly established 
itself in the field of American sport. This is the 
greyhound, whether the smooth -haired or the rough- 
coated Scotch deerhound. For half a century the army 
ofiicers posted in the far West have occasionally had 
greyhounds with them, using the dogs to course jack- 
rabbit, coyote, and sometimes deer, antelope, and gray 
wolf. Many of them were devoted to this sport — Gen- 
eral Custer, for instance. I have myself hunted with 
many of the descendants of Custer's hounds. In the 
early seventies the ranchmen of the great plains them- 
selves began to keep greyhounds for coursing (as in- 
deed they had already been used for a considerable 
time in California, after the Pacific coast jack-rabbit), 
and the sport speedily assumed large proportions and a 

333 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

permanent form. Nowadays the ranchmen of the 
cattle country not only use their greyhounds after the 
jack-rabbit, but also after every other kind of game 
animal to be found there, the antelope and coyote 
being especial favorites. Many ranchmen soon grew 
to own fine packs, coursing being the sport of all sports 
for the plains. In Texas the wild turkey was frequently 
an object of the chase, and wherever the locality enabled 
deer to be followed in the open, as, for instance, in the 
Indian Territory and in many places in the neighbor- 
hood of the large plains rivers, the whitetail was a favor- 
ite quarry, the hunters striving to surprise it in the 
early morning when feeding on the prairie. 

I have myself generally coursed with scratch packs, 
including perhaps a couple of greyhounds, a wire- 
haired deerhound, and two or three long-legged mon- 
grels. However, we generally had at least one very 
fast and savage dog — a strike dog — in each pack, and 
the others were of assistance in turning the game, 
sometimes in tiring it, and usually in helping to finish 
it at the worry. With such packs I have had many 
a wildly exciting ride over the great grassy plains lying 
near the Little Missouri and the Knife and Heart 
Rivers. Usually our proceedings on such a hunt were 
perfectly simple. We started on horseback and when 
reaching favorable ground beat across it in a long 
scattered line of men and dogs. Anything that we put 
up, from a fox to a coyote or a prongbuck, was fair 
game, and was instantly followed at full speed. The 
animals we most frequently killed were jack-rabbits. 
They always gave good runs, though, like other game, 
they differed much individually in speed. The foxes 
did not run so well, and whether they were the little 
swift or the big red prairie-fox, they were speedily 

334 



HUNTING WITH HOUNDS 

snapped up if the dogs had a fair showing. Once our 
dogs roused a blacktail buck close up out of a brush 
coulee where the ground was moderately smooth, and 
after a headlong chase of a mile they ran into him, threw 
him and killed him before he could rise. (His stiff- 
legged bounds sent him along at a tremendous pace 
at first, but he seemed to tire rather easily.) On two 
or three occasions we killed whitetail deer, and several 
times antelope. Usually, however, the antelopes es- 
caped. The bucks sometimes made a good fight, but 
generally they were seized while running, some dogs 
catching by the throat, others by the shoulders, and 
others again by the flank just in front of the hind leg. 
Wherever the hold was obtained, if the dog made his 
spring cleverly, the buck was sure to come down with 
a crash, and if the other dogs were anywhere near he 
was probably killed before he could rise, although not 
infrequently the dogs themselves were more or less 
scratched in the contests. Some greyhounds, even of 
high breeding, proved absolutely useless from timidity, 
being afraid to take hold; but if they got accustomed 
to the chase, being worked with old dogs, and had 
any pluck at all, they proved singularly fearless. A 
big 90-pound greyhound or Scotch deerhound is a 
very formidable fighting dog; I saw one whip a big 
mastiff in short order, his wonderful agility being of 
more account than his adversary's superior weight. 

The proper way to course, however, is to take the 
dogs out in a wagon and drive them thus until the 
game is seen. This prevents their being tired out. 
In my own hunting, most of the antelope aroused got 
away, the dogs being jaded when the chase began. 
But really fine greyhounds, accustomed to work to- 
gether and to hunt this species of game, will usually 

335 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

render a good account of a prongbuck if two or three 
are slipped at once, fresh, and within a moderate 
distance. 

Although most Westerners take more kindly to the 
rifle, now and then one is found who is a devotee of 
the hound. Such a one was an old Missourian, who 
may be called Mr. Cowley, whom I knew when he was 
living on a ranch in North Dakota, west of the Missouri. 
Mr. Cowley was a primitive person, of much nerve, 
which he showed not only in the hunting-field but in 
the startling political conventions of the place and pe- 
riod. He was quite well off, but he was above the nice- 
ties of personal vanity. His hunting-garb was that in 
which he also paid his rare formal calls — calls through- 
out which he always preserved the gravity of an Indian, 
though having a disconcerting way of suddenly tip- 
toeing across the room to some unfamiliar object, 
such as a peacock screen or a vase, feeling it gently 
with one forefinger, and returning with noiseless gait to 
his chair, unmoved and making no comment. On the 
morning of a hunt he would always appear on a stout 
horse, clad in a long linen duster, a huge club in his 
hand, and his trousers working half-way up his legs. 
He hunted everything on all possible occasions; and 
he never under any circumstances shot an animal 
that the dogs could kill. When a skunk got into his 
house, with the direful stupidity of its perverse kind, 
he turned the hounds on it; a manifestation of sporting 
spirit which aroused the ire of even his long-suffering 
wife. As for his dogs, provided they could run and 
fight, he cared no more for their looks than for his own; 
he preferred the animal to be half greyhound, but the 
other half could be foxhound, collie, or setter, it mat- 
tered nothing to him. They were a wicked, hard-biting 

336 



HUNTING WITH HOUNDS 

crew for all that, and Mr. Cowley, in his flapping linen 
duster, was a first-class hunter and a good rider. He 
went almost mad with excitement in every chase. 
His pack usually hunted coyote, fox, jack-rabbit, and 
deer; and I have had more than one good run with it. 
My own experience is too limited to allow me to 
pass judgment with certainty as to the relative speed 
of the different beasts of the chase, especially as there 
is so much individual variation. I consider the ante- 
lope the fleetest of all, however; and in this opinion 
I am sustained by Colonel Roger D. Williams, of Lex- 
ington, Ky., who, more than any other American, is 
entitled to speak upon coursing, and especially upon 
coursing large game. Colonel Williams, like a true son 
of Kentucky, has bred his own thoroughbred horses 
and thoroughbred hounds for many years; and during 
a series of long hunting trips extending over nearly a 
quarter of a century he has tried his pack on almost 
every game animal to be found among the foot-hills of 
the Rockies and on the great plains. His dogs, both 
smooth-haired greyhounds and rough-coated deer- 
hounds, have been bred by him for generations with a 
special view to the chase of big game — not merely of 
hares; they are large animals, excelling not only in 
speed but in strength, endurance, and ferocious courage. 
The survivors of his old pack are literally seamed all 
over with the scars of innumerable battles. When 
several dogs were together they would stop a bull 
elk and fearlessly assail a bear or cougar. This pack 
scored many a triumph over blacktail, whitetail, and 
prongbuck. For a few hundred yards the deer were 
very fast; but in a run of any duration the antelope 
showed much greater speed, and gave the dogs far 
more trouble, although always overtaken in the end, 

337 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

if a good start had been obtained. Colonel Williams 
is a firm believer in the power of the thoroughbred 
horse to outrun any animal that breathes, in a long 
chase; he has not infrequently run down deer, when 
they were jumped some miles from cover; and on two 
or three occasions he ran down uninjured antelope, but 
in each case only after a desperate ride of miles, which 
in one instance resulted in the death of his gallant 
horse. 

This coursing on the prairie, especially after big 
game, is an exceedingly manly and attractive sport; 
the furious galloping, often over rough ground with an 
occasional deep washout or gully, the sight of the 
gallant hounds running and tackling, and the exhila- 
ration of the pure air and wild surrounding, all combine 
to give it a peculiar zest. But there is really less need 
of bold and skilful horsemanship than in the otherwise 
less attractive and more artificial sport of fox-hunting, 
or riding to hounds, in a closed and long-settled country. 

Those of us who are in part of Southern blood have 
a hereditary right to be fond of cross-country riding; 
for our forefathers in Virginia, Georgia, or the Caro- 
linas have for six generations followed the fox with 
horse, horn, and hound. In the long-settled Northern 
States the sport has been less popular, though much 
more so now than formerly; yet it has always existed, 
here and there, and in certain places has been followed 
quite steadily. 

In no place in the Northeast is hunting the wild red 
fox put on a more genuine and healthy basis than in 
the Genesee Valley, in central New York. There has 
always been fox-hunting in this valley, the farmers 
having good horses and being fond of sport; but it was 
conducted in a very irregular, primitive manner, until 

338 



HUNTING WITH HOUNDS 

some twenty years ago Mr. Austin Wadsworth turned 
his attention to it. He has been master of foxhounds 
ever since, and no pack in the country has yielded 
better sport than his, or has brought out harder riders 
among the men and stronger jumpers among the horses. 
Mr. Wadsworth began his hunting by picking up some 
of the various trencher-fed hounds of the neighborhood, 
the hunting of that period being managed on the 
principle of each farmer bringing to the meet the hound 
or hounds he happened to possess, and appearing on 
foot or horseback as his fancy dictated. Having gotten 
together some of these native hounds and started fox- 
hunting in localities where the ground was so open as 
to necessitate following the chase on horseback, Mr. 
Wadsworth imported a number of dogs from the best 
English kennels. He found these to be much faster 
than the American dogs and more accustomed to work 
together, but less enduring, and without such good 
noses. The American hounds were very obstinate and 
self-willed. Each wished to work out the trail for him- 
self. But once found, they would puzzle it out, no 
matter how cold, and would follow it if necessary for 
a day and night. By a judicious crossing of the two 
Mr. Wadsworth finally got his present fine pack, which 
for its own particular work on its own ground would 
be hard to beat. The country ridden over is well 
wooded, and there are many foxes. The abundance of 
cover, however, naturally decreases the number of kills. 
It is a very fertile land, and there are few farming 
regions more beautiful, for it is prevented from being 
too tame in aspect by the number of bold hills and 
deep ravines. Most of the fences are high posts-and- 
rails or *' snake" fences, although there is an occasional 
stone wall, ha-ha, or water-jump. The steepness of 

339 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the ravines and the density of the timber make it 
necessary for a horse to be surefooted and able to 
scramble anywhere, and the fences are so high that 
none but very good jumpers can possibly follow the 
pack. Most of the horses used are bred by the farmers 
in the neighborhood, or are from Canada, and they 
usually have thoroughbred or trotting-stock blood in 
them. 

One of the pleasantest days I ever passed in the 
saddle was after Mr. Wadsworth's hounds. I was 
staying with him at the time, in company with my 
friend Senator Cabot Lodge, of Boston. The meet 
was about twelve miles distant from the house. It was 
only a small field of some twenty -five riders, but there 
was not one who did not mean going. I was mounted 
on a young horse, a powerful, big-boned black, a great 
jumper, though perhaps a trifle hot-headed. Lodge 
was on a fine bay, which could both run and jump. 
There were two or three other New Yorkers and Bos- 
tonians present, several men who had come up from 
Buffalo for the run, a couple of retired army officers, 
a number of farmers from the neighborhood, and 
finally several members of a noted local family of hard 
riders, who formed a class by themselves, all having 
taken naturally to every variety of horsemanship from 
earliest infancy. 

It was a thoroughly democratic assemblage; every 
one was there for sport, and nobody cared an ounce 
how he or anybody else was dressed. Slouch-hats, 
brown coats, corduroy breeches, and leggings, or boots, 
were the order of the day. We cast off in a thick wood. 
The dogs struck a trail almost immediately and were 
off with clamorous yelping, while the hunt thundered 
after them like a herd of buffaloes. We went headlong 

340 



HUNTING WITH HOUNDS 

down the hillside into and across a brook. Here the 
trail led straight up a sheer bank. Most of the riders 
struck off to the left for an easier place, which was un- 
fortunate for them, for the eight of us who went straight 
up the side (one man's horse falling back with him) 
were the only ones who kept on terms with the hounds. 
Almost as soon as we got to the top of the bank we 
came out of the woods over a low but awkward rail 
fence, where one of our number, who was riding a very 
excitable sorrel colt, got a fall. This left but six, in- 
cluding the whip. There were two or three large fields 
with low fences; then we came to two high, stiff 
doubles, the first real jumping of the day, the fences 
being over four feet six, and so close together that the 
horses barely had a chance to gather themselves. We 
got over, however, crossed two or three stump-strewn 
fields, galloped through an open wood, picked our way 
across a marshy spot, jumped a small brook and two 
or three stiff fences, and then came a check. Soon the 
hounds recovered the line and swung off to the right, 
back across four or five fields, so as to enable the rest 
of the hunt, by making an angle, to come up. Then we 
jumped over a very high board fence into the main road, 
out of it again, and on over ploughed fields and grass- 
lands, separated by stiff snake fences. The run had 
been fast and the horses w^ere beginning to tail. By the 
time we suddenly rattled down into a deep ravine and 
scrambled up the other side through thick timber there 
were but four of us left. Lodge and myself being two 
of the lucky ones. Beyond this ravine we came to one 
of the worst jumps of the day, a fence out of the wood, 
which was practicable only at one spot, where a kind 
of cattle-trail led up to a panel. It was within an inch 
or two of five feet high. However, the horses, thoroughly 

341 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

trained to timber-jumping and to rough and hard 
scrambling in awkward places, and by this time well 
quieted, took the bars without mistake, each one in 
turn trotting or cantering up to within a few yards, 
then making a couple of springs and bucking over with 
a great twist of the powerful haunches. I may explain 
that there was not a horse of the four that had not a 
record of five feet six inches in the ring. We now got 
into a perfect tangle of ravines, and the fox went to 
earth; and though we started one or two more in the 
course of the afternoon, we did not get another really 
first-class run. 

At Geneseo the conditions for the enjoyment of this 
sport are exceptionally favorable. In the Northeast 
generally, although there are now a number of well- 
established hunts, at least nine out of ten runs are after 
a drag. Most of the hunts are in the neighborhood of 
great cities, and are mainly kept up by young men 
who come from them. A few of these are men of leisure, 
who can afford to devote their whole time to pleasure; 
but much the larger number are men in business, who 
work hard and are obliged to make their sports ac- 
commodate themselves to their more serious occu- 
pations. Once or twice a week they can get off for 
an afternoon's ride across country, and they then 
wish to be absolutely certain of having their run, and 
of having it at the appointed time; and the only way 
to insure this is to have a drag-hunt. It is not the 
lack of foxes that has made the sport so commonly 
take the form of riding to drag-hounds, but rather the 
fact that the majority of those who keep it up are hard- 
working business men who wish to make the most out 
of every moment of the little time they can spare from 
their regular occupations. A single ride across country, 

342 



HUNTING WITH HOUNDS 

or an afternoon at polo, will yield more exercise, fun, 
and excitement than can be got out of a week's decorous 
and dull riding in the park, and many young fellows 
have waked up to this fact. 

At one time I did a good deal of hunting with the 
Meadowbrook hounds, in the northern part of Long 
Island. There were plenty of foxes around us, both 
red and gray, but partly for the reasons given above, 
and partly because the covers were so large and so 
nearly continuous, they were not often hunted, although 
an effort was always made to have one run every week 
or so after a wild fox, in order to give a chance for the 
hounds to be properly worked and to prevent the runs 
from becoming a mere succession of steeplechases. 
The sport was mainly drag-hunting, and was most 
exciting, as the fences were high and the pace fast. 
The Long Island country needs a peculiar style of horse, 
the first requisite being that he shall be a very good 
and high timber- jumper. Quite a number of crack 
English and Irish hunters have at different times been 
imported, and some of them have turned out pretty 
well; but when they first come over they are utterly 
unable to cross our country, blundering badly at the 
high timber. Few of them have done as well as the 
American horses. I have hunted half a dozen times 
in England, with the Pytchely, Essex, and North 
Warwickshire, and it seems to me probable that English 
thoroughbreds, in a grass country, and over the peculiar 
kinds of obstacles they have on the other side of the 
water, w^ould gallop away from a field of our Long 
Island horses; for they have speed and bottom, and 
are great weight-carriers. But on our own ground, 
where the cross-country riding is more like leaping a 
succession of five and six bar gates than anything else, 

343 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

they do not as a rule, in spite of the enormous prices 
paid for them, show themselves equal to the native 
stock. The highest recorded jump, seven feet two 
inches, was made by the American horse Filemaker, 
which I saw ridden in the very front by Mr. H. L. Her- 
bert, in the hunt at Sagamore Hill, about to be described. 

When I was a member of the Meadowbrook hunt, 
most of the meets were held within a dozen miles or 
so of the kennels : at Farmingdale, Woodbury, Wheatly, 
Locust Valley, Syosset, or near any one of twenty other 
queer, quaint old Long Island hamlets. They were 
almost always held in the afternoon, the business men 
who had come down from the city jogging over behind 
the hounds to the appointed place, where they were 
met by the men who had ridden over direct from their 
country houses. If the meet was an important one, 
there might be a crowd of onlookers in every kind of 
trap, from a four-in-hand drag to a spider-wheeled 
buggy drawn by a pair of long-tailed trotters, the 
money value of which many times surpassed that of 
the two best hunters in the whole field. Now and then 
a breakfast would be given the hunt at some country 
house, when the whole day was devoted to the sport; 
perhaps after wild foxes in the morning, with a drag in 
the afternoon. 

After one meet, at Sagamore Hill, I had the curiosity 
to go on foot over the course we had taken, measuring 
the jumps; for it is very difficult to form a good estimate 
of a fence's height when in the field, and five feet of 
timber seems a much easier thing to take when sitting 
around the fire after dinner than it does when actually 
faced while the hounds are running. On the particular 
hunt in question we ran about ten miles, at a rattling 
pace, with only two checks, crossing somewhat more 

344 



HUNTING WITH HOUNDS 

than sixty fences, most of them post-and-rails, stiff 
as steel, the others being of the kind called "Virginia" 
or snake, and not more than ten or a dozen in the whole 
lot under four feet in height. The highest measured 
five feet and half an inch, two others were four feet 
eleven, and nearly a third of the number averaged 
about four and a half. There were also several rather 
awkward doubles. When the hounds were cast off 
some forty riders were present, but the first fence was 
a savage one, and stopped all who did not mean genuine 
hard going. Twenty-six horses crossed it, one of them 
ridden by a lady. A mile or so farther on, before there 
had been a chance for much tailing, we came to a 
five-bar gate, out of a road — a jump of just four feet 
five inches from the take-off. Up to this, of course, 
we went one at a time, at a trot or hand-gallop, and 
twenty-five horses cleared it in succession without a 
single refusal and with but one mistake. Owing to 
the severity of the pace, combined with the average 
height of the timber (although no one fence was of 
phenomenally noteworthy proportions), a good many 
falls took place, resulting in an unusually large per- 
centage of accidents. The master partly dislocated 
one knee, another man broke two ribs, and another — 
the present writer — broke his arm. However, almost 
all of us managed to struggle through to the end in 
time to see the death. 

On this occasion I owed my broken arm to the fact 
that my horse, a solemn animal originally taken out of 
a buggy, though a very clever fencer, was too coarse 
to gallop alongside the blooded beasts against which 
he was pitted. But he was so easy in his gaits, and so 
quiet, being ridden with only a snaffle, that there was 
no difficulty in following to the end of the run. I had 

345 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

divers adventures on this horse. Once I tried a pair 
of so-called "safety" stirrups, which speedily fell out, 
and I had to ride through the run without any, at the 
cost of several tumbles. Much the best hunter I 
ever owned was a sorrel horse named Sagamore. He 
was from Geneseo, was fast, a remarkably good jumper, 
of great endurance, as quick on his feet as a cat, and 
with a dauntless heart. He never gave me a fall, and 
generally enabled me to see all the run. 

It would be very unfair to think the sport especially 
dangerous on account of the occasional accidents that 
happen. A man who is fond of riding, but who sets 
a good deal of value, either for the sake of himself, his 
family, or his business, upon his neck and limbs, can 
hunt with much safety if he gets a quiet horse, a safe 
fencer, and does not try to stay in the front rank. 
Most accidents occur to men on green or wild horses, 
or else to those who keep in front only at the expense 
of pumping their mounts; and a fall with a done-out 
beast is always peculiarly disagreeable. Most falls, 
however, do no harm whatever to either horse or rider, 
and after they have picked themselves up and shaken 
themselves, the couple ought to be able to go on just 
as well as ever. Of course a man who wishes to keep 
in the first flight must expect to face a certain number of 
tumbles; but even he will probably not be hurt at all, 
and he can avoid many a mishap by easing up his horse 
whenever he can — that is, by always taking a gap 
when possible, going at the lowest panel of every 
fence, and not calling on his animal for all there is in 
him unless it cannot possibly be avoided. It must be 
remembered that hard riding is a very different thing 
from good riding; though a good rider to hounds must 
also at times ride hard. 

346 



HUNTING WITH HOUNDS 

Cross-country riding in the rough is not a difficult 
thing to learn; always provided the would-be learner 
is gifted with or has acquired a fairly stout heart, for 
a constitutionally timid person is out of place in the 
hunting-field. A really finished cross-country rider, 
a man who combines hand and seat, heart and head, 
is of course rare; the standard is too high for most of 
us to hope to reach. But it is comparatively easy to 
acquire a light hand and a capacity to sit fairly well 
down in the saddle; and when a man has once got 
these, he will find no especial difficulty in following the 
hounds on a trained hunter. 

Fox-hunting is a great sport, but it is as foolish to 
make a fetich of it as it is to decry it. The fox is hunted 
merely because there is no larger game to follow. As 
long as wolves, deer, or antelope remain in the land, 
and in a country where hounds and horsemen can work, 
no one would think of following the fox. It is pursued 
because the bigger beasts of the chase have been killed 
out. In England it has reached its present prominence 
only within two centuries; nobody followed the fox 
while the stag and the boar were common. At the 
present day, on Exmoor, where the wild stag is still 
found, its chase ranks ahead of that of the fox. It is 
not really the hunting proper which is the point in 
fox-hunting. It is the horsemanship, the galloping and 
jumping, and the being out in the open air. Very 
naturally, however, men who have passed their lives as 
fox-hunters grow to regard the chase and the object 
of it alike with superstitious veneration. They at- 
tribute almost mythical characters to the animal. I 
know some of my good Virginia friends, for instance, 
who seriously believe that the Virginia red fox is a 
beast quite unparalleled for speed and endurance no 

347 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

less than for cunning. This is of course a mistake. 
Compared with a wolf, an antelope, or even a deer, 
the fox's speed and endurance do not stand very high. 
A good pack of hounds starting him close would 
speedily run into him in the open. The reason that 
the hunts last so long in some cases is because of the 
nature of the ground, which favors the fox at the ex- 
pense of the dogs ; because of his having the advantage 
in the start, and because of his cunning in turning to 
account everything which will tell in his favor and 
against his pursuers. In the same way I know plenty 
of English friends who speak with bated breath of fox- 
hunting but look down upon riding to drag-hounds. 
Of course there is a difference in the two sports, and 
the fun of actually hunting the wild beast in the one 
case more than compensates for the fact that in the 
other the riding is apt to be harder and the jumping 
higher; but both sports are really artificial, and in 
their essentials alike. To any man who has hunted 
big game in a wild country the stress laid on the differ- 
ences between them seems a little absurd, in fact 
cockney. It is of course nothing against either that 
it is artificial ; so are all sports in long-civilized countries, 
from lacrosse to ice-yachting. 

It is amusing to see how natural it is for each man 
to glorify the sport to which he has been accustomed 
at the expense of any other. The old-school French 
sportsman, for instance, who followed the boar, stag, 
and hare with his hounds, always looked down upon 
the chase of the fox; whereas the average Englishman 
not only asserts but seriously believes that no other 
kind of chase can compare with it, although in actual 
fact the very points in which the Englishman is superior 
to the Continental sportsman — that is, in hard and 

348 



HUNTING WITH HOUNDS 

straight riding and jumping — are those which drag- 
hunting tends to develop rather more than fox-hunting 
proper. In the mere hunting itself the Continental 
sportsman is often unsurpassed. 

Once beyond the Missouri, I met an expatriated 
German baron, an unfortunate who had failed utterly in 
the rough life of the frontier. He was living in a squalid 
little hut, almost unfurnished, but studded around 
with the diminutive horns of the European roebuck. 
These were the only treasures he had taken with him 
to remind him of his former life, and he was never tired 
of describing what fun it was to shoot roebucks when 
driven by the little crooked-legged dachshunds. There 
were plenty of deer and antelope round about, yielding 
good sport to any rifleman, but this exile cared nothing 
for them; they were not roebucks, and they could not 
be chased with his beloved dachshunds. So, among 
my neighbors in the cattle country, is a gentleman 
from France, a very successful ranchman, and a thor- 
oughly good fellow; he cares nothing for hunting big 
game, and will not go after it, but is devoted to shoot- 
ing cottontails in the snow, this being a pastime hav- 
ing much resemblance to one of the recognized sports 
of his own land. 

However, our own people afford precisely similar 
instances. I have met plenty of men accustomed to 
killing wild turkeys and deer with small-bore rifles in 
the Southern forests who, when they got on the plains 
and in the Rockies, were absolutely helpless. They 
not only failed to become proficient in the art of killing 
big game at long ranges with the large-bore rifle, at the 
cost of fatiguing tramps, but they had a positive dis- 
taste for the sport and would never allow that it 
equalled their own stealthy hunts in Southern forests. 

349 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

So I know plenty of men, experts with the shotgun, 
who honestly prefer shooting quail in the East, over 
well-trained setters or pointers, to the hardier, manlier 
sports of the wilderness. 

As it is with hunting, so it is with riding. The cow- 
boy's scorn of every method of riding save his own is 
as profound and as ignorant as is that of the school 
rider, jockey, or fox-hunter. The truth is that each of 
these is best in his own sphere and is at a disadvantage 
when made to do the work of any of the others. For 
all-around riding and horsemanship, I think the West 
Point graduate is somewhat ahead of any of them. 
Taken as a class, however, and compared with other 
classes as numerous, and not with a few exceptional 
individuals, the cowboy, like the Rocky Mountain 
stage-driver, has no superiors anywhere for his own 
work; and they are fine fellows, these iron-nerved 
reinsmen and rough-riders. 

When Buffalo Bill took his cowboys to Europe they 
made a practice in England, France, Germany, and 
Italy of offering to break and ride, in their own fashion, 
any horse given them. They were frequently given 
spoiled animals from the cavalry services in the different 
countries through which they passed, animals with 
which the trained horse-breakers of the European ar- 
mies could do nothing; and yet in almost all cases 
the cow-punchers and bronco-busters with Buffalo Bill 
mastered these beasts as readily as they did their own 
Western horses. At their own work of mastering and 
riding rough horses they could not be matched by their 
more civilized rivals; but I have great doubts whether 
they in turn would not have been beaten if they had 
essayed kinds of horsemanship utterly alien to their 
past experience, such as riding mettled thoroughbreds 

350 



HUNTING WITH HOUNDS 

in a steeplechase, or the like. Other things being 
equal (which, however, they generally are not), a bad 
big horse fed on oats offers a rather more difficult prob- 
lem than a bad little horse fed on grass. After Buffalo 
Bill's men had returned, I occasionally heard it said 
that they had tried cross-country riding in England, 
and had shown themselves pre-eminently skilful thereat, 
doing better than the English fox-hunters, but this I 
take the liberty to disbelieve. I was in England at 
the time, hunted occasionally myself, and was with 
many of the men who were all the time riding in the 
most famous hunts; men, too, who were greatly im- 
pressed with the exhibitions of rough-riding then being 
given by Buffalo Bill and his men, and who talked of 
them much; and yet I never, at the time, heard of an 
instance in which one of the cowboys rode to hounds 
with any marked success.* In the same way I have 
sometimes in New York or London heard of men who, 
it was alleged, had been out West and proved better 
riders than the bronco-busters themselves, just as I 
have heard of similar men who were able to go out 
hunting in the Rockies or on the plains and get more 
game than the Western hunters; but in the course of 
a long experience in the West I have yet to see any of 
these men, whether from the Eastern States or from 
Europe, actually show such superiority or perform such 
feats. It would be interesting to compare the per- 
formances of the Australian stock-riders with those 
of our own cow-punchers, both in cow work and in 
riding. The Australians have an entirely different kind 
of saddle, and the use of the rope is unknown among 

* It is, however, quite possible, now that BufiFalo Bill's company has crossed 
the water several times, that a number of the cowboys have by practice become 
proficient in riding to hounds and in steeplechasing. 

351 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

them. A couple of years ago the famous Western rifle- 
shot, Carver, took some cowboys out to AustraHa, and 
I am informed that many of the AustraHans began 
themselves to practise with the rope after seeing the 
way it was used by the Americans. An Australian 
gentleman, Mr. A. J. Sage, of Melbourne, to whom I 
had written asking how the saddles and styles of riding 
compared, answered me as follows: 

"With regard to saddles, here it is a moot question 
which is the better, yours or ours, for buck-jumpers. 
Carver's boys rode in their own saddles against our 
Victorians in theirs, all on Australian buckers, and 
honors seemed easy. Each was good in his own style, 
but the horses were not what I should call really good 
buckers, such as you might get on a back station, and 
so there was nothing in the show that could unseat 
the cowboys. It is only back in the bush that you can 
get a really good bucker. I have often seen one of 
them put both man and saddle off." 

This last is a feat I have myself seen performed in 
the West. I suppose the amount of it is that both the 
American and the Australian rough-riders are, for their 
own work, just as good as men possibly can be. 

One spring I had to leave the East in the midst of 
the hunting season, to join a round-up in the cattle 
country of western Dakota, and it was curious to com- 
pare the totally different styles of riding of the cowboys 
and the cross-country men. A stock-saddle weighs 
thirty or forty pounds instead of ten or fifteen and needs 
an utterly different seat from that adopted in the East. 
A cowboy rides with very long stirrups, sitting forked 
well down between his high pommel and cantle, and 
depends upon balance as well as on the grip of his 
thighs. In cutting out a steer from a herd, in breaking 

352 



HUNTING WITH HOUNDS 

a vicious wild horse, in sitting a bucking bronco, in 
stopping a night stampede of many hundred maddened 
animals, or in the performance of a hundred other feats 
of reckless and daring horsemanship, the cowboy is 
absolutely unequalled; and when he has his own horse- 
gear he sits his animal with the ease of a centaur. Yet 
he is quite helpless the first time he gets astride one 
of the small Eastern saddles. One summer, while 
purchasing cattle in Iowa, one of my ranch foremen 
had to get on an ordinary saddle to ride out of town 
and see a bunch of steers. He is perhaps the best rider 
on the ranch, and will without hesitation mount and 
master beasts that I doubt if the boldest rider in one 
of our Eastern hunts would care to tackle; yet his 
uneasiness on the new saddle was fairly comical. At 
first he did not dare to trot, and the least plunge of the 
horse bid fair to unseat him, nor did he begin to get 
accustomed to the situation until the very end of the 
journey. In fact, the two kinds of riding are so very 
different that a man only accustomed to one feels al- 
most as ill at ease when he first tries the other as if he 
had never sat on a horse's back before. It is rather 
funny to see a man who only knows one kind, and is 
conceited enough to think that that is really the only 
kind worth knowing, when first he is brought into con- 
tact with the other. Two or three times I have known 
men try to follow hounds on stock-saddles, which are 
about as ill suited for the purpose as they well can 
be; while it is even more laughable to see some young 
fellow from the East or from England, who thinks he 
knows entirely too much about horses to be taught by 
barbarians, attempt in his turn to do cow work with 
his ordinary riding or hunting rig. It must be said, 
however, that in all probability cowboys would learn 

353 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

to ride well across country much sooner than the 
average cross-country rider would master the dashing 
and peculiar style of horsemanship shown by those 
whose life business is to guard the wandering herds of 
the great Western plains. 

Of course riding to hounds, like all sports in long- 
settled, thickly peopled countries, fails to develop in 
its followers some of the hardy qualities necessarily 
incident to the wilder pursuits of the mountain and 
the forest. While I was on the frontier I was struck 
by the fact that of the men from the Eastern States or 
from England who had shown themselves at home to 
be good riders to hounds or had made their records 
as college athletes, a larger proportion failed in the 
life of the wilderness than was the case among those 
who had gained their experience in such rough pastimes 
as mountaineering in the high Alps, winter caribou- 
hunting in Canada, or deer-stalking — not deer-driving 
— in Scotland. 

Nevertheless, of all sports possible in civilized coun- 
tries, riding to hounds is perhaps the best if followed 
as it should be, for the sake of the strong excitement, 
with as much simplicity as possible, and not merely as 
a fashionable amusement. It tends to develop moral no 
less than physical qualities; the rider needs nerve and 
head; he must possess daring and resolution, as well 
as a good deal of bodily skill and a certain amount of 
wiry toughness and endurance. 



354 



XIX 

WOLVES AND WOLF-HOUNDS 

The wolf is the archetype of ravin, the beast of waste 
and desolation. It is still found scattered thinly 
throughout all the wilder portions of the United States, 
but has everywhere retreated from the advance of 
civilization. 

Wolves show an infinite variety in color, size, physical 
formation, and temper. Almost all the varieties inter- 
grade with one another, however, so that it is very 
diflScult to draw a hard-and-fast line between any two 
of them. Nevertheless, west of the Mississippi there 
are found two distinct types. One is the wolf proper, 
or big wolf, specifically akin to the wolves of the East- 
ern States. The other is the little coyote, or prairie- 
wolf. The coyote and the big wolf are found together 
in almost all the wilder districts from the Rio Grande 
to the valleys of the upper Missouri and the upper 
Columbia. Throughout this region there is always a 
sharp line of demarcation, especially in size, between 
the coyotes and the big wolves of any given district; 
but in certain districts the big wolves are very much 
larger than their brethren in other districts. In the 
upper Columbia country, for instance, they are very 
large; along the Rio Grande they are small. Doctor 
Hart Merriam informs me that, according to his ex- 
perience, the coyote is largest in southern California. 
In many respects the coyote differs altogether in habits 
from its big relative. For one thing, it is far more toler- 
ant of man. In some localities coyotes are more numer- 
ous around settlements, and even in the close vicinity 

355 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

of large towns, than they are in the frowning and 
desolate fastnesses haunted by their grim elder brother. 

Big wolves vary far more in color than the coyotes 
do. I have seen white, black, red, yellow, brown, gray, 
and grizzled skins, and others representing every shade 
between, although usually each locality has its pre- 
vailing tint. The grizzled, gray, and brown often have 
precisely the coat of the coyote. The difference in 
size among wolves of different localities, and even of 
the same locality, is quite remarkable, and so, curiously 
enough, is the difference in the size of the teeth, in 
some cases even when the body of one wolf is as big as 
that of another. I have seen wolves from Texas and 
New Mexico which were undersized, slim animals with 
rather small tusks, in no way to be compared to the 
long-toothed giants of their race that dwell in the 
heavily timbered mountains of the Northwest and in 
the far North. As a rule, the teeth of the coyote are 
relatively smaller than those of the gray wolf. 

Formerly wolves were incredibly abundant in certain 
parts of the country, notably on the great plains, where 
they were known as buffalo-wolves, and were regular 
attendants on the great herds of the bison. Every 
traveller and hunter of the old days knew them as 
among the most common sights of the plains, and they 
followed the hunting parties and emigrant trains for 
the sake of the scraps left in camp. Now, however, 
there is no district in which they are really abundant. 
The wolfers, or professional wolf-hunters, who killed 
them by poisoning for the sake of their fur, and the 
cattlemen, who likewise killed them by poisoning be- 
cause of their raids on the herds, have doubtless been 
the chief instruments in working their decimation on 
the plains. In the 70's, and even in the early 80's, 

356 



WOLVES AND WOLF-HOUNDS 

many tens of thousands of wolves were killed by the 
wolfers in Montana and northern Wyoming and west- 
ern Dakota. Nowadays the surviving wolves of the 
plains have learned caution; they no longer move 
abroad at midday, and still less do they dream of 
hanging on the footsteps of hunter and traveller. 
Instead of being one of the most common they have 
become one of the rarest sights of the plains. A hunter 
may wander far and wide through the plains for months 
nowadays and never see a wolf, though he will probably 
see many coyotes. However, the diminution goes on, 
not steadily but by fits and starts, and, moreover, the 
beasts now and then change their abodes and appear in 
numbers in places where they have been scarce for a 
long period. In the present winter of 1892-93 big 
wolves are more plentiful in the neighborhood of my 
ranch than they have been for ten years, and have 
worked some havoc among the cattle and young horses. 
The cowboys have been carrying on the usual vindic- 
tive campaign against them; a number have been 
poisoned, and a number of others have fallen victims 
to their greediness, the cowboys surprising them when 
gorged to repletion on the carcass of a colt or calf and 
in consequence unable to run, so that they are easily 
ridden down, roped, and then dragged to death. 

Yet even the slaughter wrought by man in certain 
localities does not seem adequate to explain the scarcity 
or extinction of wolves throughout the country at 
large. In most places they are not followed any more 
eagerly than are the other large beasts of prey, and 
they are usually followed with less success. Of all 
animals the wolf is the shyest and hardest to slay. 
It is almost or quite as difficult to still-hunt as the 
cougar, and is far more difficult to kill with hounds, 

357 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

traps, or poison; yet it scarcely holds its own as well 
as the great cat, and it does not begin to hold its 
own as well as the bear, a beast certainly more readily 
killed, and one which produces fewer young at a birth. 
Throughout the East the black bear is common in 
many localities from which the wolf has vanished com- 
pletely. It at present exists in very scanty numbers 
in northern Maine and the Adirondacks; is almost or 
quite extinct in Pennsylvania; lingers here and there 
in the mountains from West Virginia to east Tennessee, 
and is found in Florida ; but is everywhere less abundant 
than the bear. It is possible that this destruction of 
the wolves is due to some disease among them, perhaps 
to hydrophobia, a terrible malady, from which it is 
known that they suffer greatly at times. Perhaps the 
bear is helped by its habit of hibernating, which frees 
it from most dangers during winter; but this cannot 
be the complete explanation, for in the South it does 
not hibernate, and yet holds its own as well as in the 
North. What makes it all the more curious that the 
American wolf should disappear sooner than the bear 
is that the reverse is the case with the allied species of 
Europe, where the bear is much sooner killed out of the 
land. 

Indeed the differences of this sort between nearly 
related animals are literally inexplicable. Much of 
the difference in temperament between such closely 
allied species as the American and European bears and 
wolves is doubtless due to their surroundings and to 
the instincts they have inherited through many gener- 
ations ; but for much of the variation it is not possible 
to offer any explanation. In the same way there are 
certain physical differences for which it is very hard 
to account, as the same conditions seem to operate in 

358 



WOLVES AND WOLF-HOUNDS 

directly reverse ways with different animals. No one 
can explain the process of natural selection which has 
resulted in the otter of America being larger than the 
otter of Europe, while the badger is smaller; in the 
mink being with us a much stouter animal than its 
Scandinavian and Russian kinsman, while the reverse 
is true of our sable or pine-marten. No one can say 
why the European red deer should be a pigmy com- 
pared to its giant brother, the American wapiti; why 
the Old World elk should average smaller in size than 
the almost indistinguishable New World moose and 
yet the bison of Lithuania and the Caucasus be on the 
whole larger and more formidable than its American 
cousin. In the same way no one can tell why under 
like conditions some game, such as the white goat and 
the spruce-grouse, should be tamer than other closely 
allied species, like the mountain -sheep and ruffed grouse. 
No one can say why on the whole the wolf of Scan- 
dinavia and northern Russia should be larger and more 
dangerous than the average wolf of the Rocky Moun- 
tains, while between the bears of the same regions the 
comparison must be exactly reversed. 

The difference even among the wolves of different 
sections of our own country is very notable. It may 
be true that the species as a whole is rather weak and 
less ferocious than the European wolf; but it is certainly 
not true of the wolves of certain localities. The great 
timber-wolf of the central and northern chains of the 
Rockies and coast ranges is in every way a more formi- 
dable creature than the buffalo -wolf of the plains, 
although they intergrade. The skins and skulls of the 
wolves of northwestern Montana and Washington 
which I have seen were quite as large and showed 
quite as stout claws and teeth as the skins and skulls of 

359 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

Russian and Scandinavian wolves, and I believe that 
these great timber-wolves are in every way as formidable 
as their Old World kinsfolk. However, they live where 
they come in contact with a population of rifle-bearing 
frontier hunters, who are very different from European 
peasants or Asiatic tribesmen; and they have, even 
when most hungry, a wholesome dread of human be- 
ings. Yet I doubt if an unarmed man would be en- 
tirely safe should he, while alone in the forest in mid- 
winter, encounter a fair-sized pack of ravenously hun- 
gry timber-wolves. 

A full-grown dog-wolf of the northern Rockies, in 
exceptional instances, reaches a height of thirty-two 
inches and a weight of 130 pounds; a big buffalo-wolf 
of the upper Missouri stands thirty or thirty-one inches 
at the shoulder and weighs about 110 pounds. A 
Texan wolf may not reach over eighty pounds. The 
bitch wolves are smaller; and moreover there is often 
great variation even in the wolves of closely neighboring 
localities. 

The wolves of the Southern plains were not often 
formidable to large animals, even in the days when 
they most abounded. They rarely attacked the horses 
of the hunter, and indeed were but little regarded by 
these experienced animals. They were much more 
likely to gnaw off the lariat with which the horse was 
tied than to try to molest the steed himself. They 
preferred to prey on young animals, or on the weak and 
disabled. They rarely molested a full-grown cow or 
steer, still less a full-grown buffalo, and, if they did 
attack such an animal, it was only when emboldened 
by numbers. In the plains of the upper Missouri and 
Saskatchewan the wolf was, and is, more dangerous, 
while in the northern Rockies his courage and ferocity 

360 



WOLVES AND WOLF-HOUNDS 

attain their highest pitch. Near my own ranch the 
wolves have sometimes committed great depredations 
on cattle, but they seem to have queer freaks of 
slaughter. Usually they prey only upon calves and 
sickly animals; but in midwinter I have known one 
single-handed to attack and kill a well-grown steer or 
cow, disabling its quarry by rapid snaps at the hams 
or flanks. Only rarely have I known it to seize by the 
throat. Colts are likewise a favorite prey, but with 
us wolves rarely attack full-grown horses. They are 
sometimes very bold in their assaults, falling on the 
stock while immediately around the ranch-houses. 
They even venture into the hamlet of Medora itself at 
night — as the coyotes sometimes do by day. In the 
spring of '92 we put on some Eastern two-year-old 
steers; they arrived, and were turned loose from the 
stock-yards, in a snow-storm, though it was in early 
May. Next morning we found that one had been seized, 
slain, and partially devoured by a big wolf at the very 
gate of the stock-yard; probably the beast had seen it 
standing near the yard after nightfall, feeling miserable 
after its journey, in the storm and its unaccustomed 
surroundings, and had been emboldened to make the 
assault so near town by the evident helplessness of the 
prey. 

The big timber - wolves of the northern Rocky 
Mountains attack every four-footed beast to be found 
where they live. They are far from contenting them- 
selves with hunting deer and snapping up the pigs and 
sheep of the farm. When the weather gets cold and 
food scarce they band together in small parties, per- 
haps of four or five individuals, and then assail any- 
thing, even a bear or a panther. A bull elk or bull 
moose, when on its guard, makes a most dangerous 

361 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

fight; but a single wolf will frequently master the cow 
of either animal, as well as domestic cattle and horses. 
In attacking such large game, however, the wolves 
like to act in concert, one springing at the animal's 
head, and attracting its attention, while the other 
hamstrings it. Nevertheless, one such big wolf will kill 
an ordinary horse. A man I knew, who was engaged 
in packing into the Coeur d'Alenes, once witnessed 
such a feat on the part of a wolf. He was taking his 
pack-train down into a valley when he saw a horse 
grazing therein; it had been turned loose by another 
packing outfit because it became exhausted. He lost 
sight of it as the trail went down a zigzag, and while 
it was thus out of sight he suddenly heard it utter the 
appalling scream, unlike and more dreadful than any 
other sound, which a horse only utters in extreme 
fright or agony. The scream was repeated, and as he 
came in sight again he saw that a great wolf had at- 
tacked the horse. The poor animal had been bitten 
terribly in its haunches and was cowering upon them, 
while the wolf stood and looked at it a few paces off. 
In a moment or two the horse partially recovered and 
made a desperate bound forward, starting at full gallop. 
Immediately the wolf was after it, overhauled it in 
three or four jumps, and then seized it by the hock, 
while its legs were extended, with such violence as to 
bring it completely back on its haunches. It again 
screamed piteously; and this time with a few savage 
snaps the wolf hamstrung and partially disembowelled 
it, and it fell over, having made no attempt to defend 
itself. I have heard of more than one incident of this 
kind. If a horse is a good fighter, however, as oc- 
casionally, though not often, happens, it is a most 
difiicult prey for any wild beast, and some veteran 

362 



WOLVES AND WOLF-HOUNDS 

horses have no fear of wolves whatsoever, well knowing 
that they can either strike them down with their fore- 
feet or repulse them by lashing out behind. 

Wolves are cunning beasts and will often try to lull 
their prey into unsuspicion by playing round and 
cutting capers. I once saw a young deer and a wolf 
cub together near the hut of the settler who had cap- 
tured both. The wolf was just old enough to begin to 
feel vicious and bloodthirsty and to show symptoms 
of attacking the deer. On the occasion in question he 
got loose and ran toward it, but it turned, and began 
to hit him with its forefeet, seemingly in sport; where- 
at he rolled over on his back before it, and acted like 
a puppy at play. Soon it turned and walked off; 
immediately the wolf, with bristling hair, crawled after, 
and with a pounce seized it by the haunch, and would 
doubtless have murdered the bleating, struggling crea- 
ture, had not the bystanders interfered. 

Where there are no domestic animals, wolves feed 
on almost anything from a mouse to an elk. They are 
redoubted enemies of foxes. They are easily able to 
overtake them in fair chase, and kill numbers. If the 
fox can get into the underbrush, however, he can 
dodge around much faster than the wolf, and so escape 
pursuit. Sometimes one wolf will try to put a fox out 
of a cover while another waits outside to snap him up. 
Moreover, the wolf kills even closer kinsfolk than the 
fox. When pressed by hunger it will undoubtedly 
sometimes seize a coyote, tear it in pieces and devour 
it, although during most of the year the two animals 
live in perfect harmony. I once myself, while out in 
the deep snow, came across the remains of a coyote 
that had been killed in this manner. Wolves are also 
very fond of the flesh of dogs, and if they get a chance 

363 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

promptly kill and eat any dog they can master — and 
there are but few that they cannot. Nevertheless, I 
have been told of one instance in which a wolf struck 
up an extraordinary friendship with a strayed dog, and 
the two lived and hunted together for many months, 
being frequently seen by the settlers of the locality. 
This occurred near Thompson's Falls, Montana. 

Usually wolves are found singly, in pairs, or in family 
parties, each having a large beat over which it regularly 
hunts, and also at times shifting its ground and travel- 
ling immense distances in order to take up a temporary 
abode in some new locality — for they are great wan- 
derers. It is only under stress of severe weather that 
they band together in packs. They prefer to creep 
on their prey and seize it by a sudden pounce, but, 
unlike the cougar, they also run it down in fair chase. 
Their slouching, tireless gallop enables them often to 
overtake deer, antelope, or other quarry, though under 
favorable circumstances, especially if near a lake, the 
latter frequently escape. Whether wolves run cunning 
I do not know; but I think they must, for coyotes 
certainly do. A coyote cannot run down a jack-rabbit; 
but two or three working together will often catch one. 
Once I saw three start a jack, which ran right away 
from them; but they spread out, and followed. Pretty 
soon the jack turned slightly, and ran near one of the 
outside ones, saw it, became much frightened, and 
turned at right angles, so as soon to nearly run into 
the other outside one, which had kept straight on. 
This happened several times, and then the confused 
jack lay down under a sage-bush and was seized. So 
I have seen two coyotes attempting to get at a newly 
dropped antelope kid. One would make a feint of 
attack, and lure the dam into a rush at him, while the 

364 



WOLVES AND WOLF-HOUNDS 

other stole round to get at the kid. The dam, as always 
with these spirited little prongbucks, made a good 
fight, and kept the assailants at bay; yet I think they 
would have succeeded in the end, had I not interfered. 
Coyotes are bold and cunning in raiding the settlers' 
barnyards for lambs and hens; and they have an es- 
pecial liking for tame cats. If there are coyotes in the 
neighborhood a cat which gets into the habit of wander- 
ing from home is surely lost. 

Though I have never known wolves to attack a man, 
yet in the wilder portion of the far Northwest I have 
heard them come around camp very close, growling so 
savagely as to make one almost reluctant to leave the 
camp-fire and go out into the darkness unarmed. Once 
I was camped in the fall near a lonely little lake in the 
mountains, by the edge of quite a broad stream. Soon 
after nightfall three or four wolves came around camp 
and kept me awake by their sinister and dismal howling. 
Two or three times they came so close to the fire that 
I could hear them snap their jaws and growl, and at 
one time I positively thought that they intended to 
try to get into camp, so excited were they by the smell 
of the fresh meat. After a while they stopped howling; 
and then all was silent for an hour or so. I let the fire 
go out and was turning into bed when I suddenly heard 
some animal of considerable size come down to the 
stream nearly opposite me and begin to splash across, 
first wading, then swimming. It was pitch-dark and 
I could not possibly see, but I felt sure it was a wolf. 
However after coming half-way over it changed its 
mind and swam back to the opposite bank; nor did I 
see or hear anything more of the night marauders. 

Five or six times on the plains or on my ranch I 
have had shots at wolves, always obtained by accident 

365 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

and always, I regret to say, missed. Often the wolf 
when seen was running at full speed for cover, or else 
was so far off that, though motionless, my shots 
went wide of it. But once have I with my own rifle 
killed a wolf, and this was while travelling with a pack- 
train in the mountains. We had been making consider- 
able noise, and I never understood how an animal so 
wary permitted our near approach. He did, neverthe- 
less, and just as we came to a little stream which we 
were to ford I saw him get on a dead log some thirty 
yards distant and walk slowly off with his eyes turned 
toward us. The first shot smashed his shoulders and 
brought him down. 

The wolf is one of the animals which can be hunted 
successfully only with dogs. Most dogs, however, do 
not take at all kindly to the pursuit. A wolf is a terrible 
fighter. He will decimate a pack of hounds by rabid 
snaps with his giant jaws while suffering little damage 
himself; nor are the ordinary big dogs, supposed to 
be fighting dogs, able to tackle him without special 
training. I have known one wolf to kill with a single 
snap a bulldog which had rushed at it, while another 
which had entered the yard of a Montana ranch-house 
slew in quick succession both of the large mastiffs by 
which it was assailed. The immense agility and ferocity 
of the wild beast, the terrible snap of his long-toothed 
jaws, and the admirable training in which he always 
is, give him a great advantage over fat, small-toothed, 
smooth-skinned dogs, even though they are nominally 
supposed to belong to the fighting classes. In the way 
that bench competitions are arranged nowadays this 
is but natural, as there is no temptation to produce a 
worthy class of fighting dog when the rewards are given 
upon technical points wholly unconnected with the 

366 



WOLVES AND WOLF-HOUNDS 

dog's usefulness. A prize-winning mastiff or bulldog 
may be almost useless for the only purposes for which 
his kind is ever useful at all. A mastiff, if properly 
trained and of sufficient size, might possibly be able to 
meet a young or undersized Texan wolf; but I have 
never seen a dog of this variety which I would esteem a 
match single-handed for one of the huge timber-wolves 
of western Montana. Even if the dog was the heavier 
of the two, his teeth and claws would be very much 
smaller and weaker and his hide less tough. Indeed 
I have known of but one dog which single-handed en- 
countered and slew a wolf; this was the large vicious 
mongrel whose feats are recorded in my "Hunting 
Trips of a Ranchman." 

General Marcy, of the United States Army, informed 
me that he once chased a huge wolf which had gotten 
away with a small trap on its foot. It was, I believe, 
in Wisconsin, and he had twenty or thirty hounds with 
him, but they were entirely untrained to wolf-hunting, 
and proved unable to stop the crippled beast. Few of 
them would attack it at all, and those that did went 
at it singly and with a certain hesitation, and so each 
in turn was disabled by a single terrible snap and left 
bleeding on the snow. General W^ade Hampton tells 
me that in the course of his fifty years' hunting with 
horse and hound in Mississippi, he has on several oc- 
casions tried his pack of foxhounds (Southern deer- 
hounds) after a wolf. He found that it was with the 
greatest difficulty, however, that he could persuade 
them to so much as follow the trail. Usually, as soon 
as they came across it, they would growl, bristle up, 
and then retreat with their tails between their legs. 
But one of his dogs ever really tried to master a wolf 
by itself, and this one paid for its temerity with its 

367 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

life; for while running a wolf in a cane-brake the beast 
turned and tore it to pieces. Finally General Hampton 
succeeded in getting a number of his hounds so they 
would at any rate follow the trail in full cry, and thus 
drive the wolf out of the thicket, and give a chance to the 
hunter to get a shot. In this way he killed two or three. 
The true way to kill wolves, however, is to hunt 
them with greyhounds on the great plains. Nothing 
more exciting than this sport can possibly be imagined. 
It is not always necessary that the greyhound should 
be of absolutely pure blood. Prize-winning dogs of 
high pedigree often prove useless for the purpose. If 
by careful choice, however, a ranchman can get to- 
gether a pack composed both of the smooth-haired 
greyhound and the rough-haired Scotch deerhound, 
he can have excellent sport. The greyhounds sometimes 
do best if they have a slight cross of bulldog in their 
veins, but this is not necessary. If once a greyhound 
can be fairly entered to the sport and acquires con- 
fidence, then its wonderful agility, its sinewy strength 
and speed, and the terrible snap with which its jaws 
come together render it a most formidable assailant. 
Nothing can possibly exceed the gallantry with which 
good greyhounds, when their blood is up, fling them- 
selves on a wolf or any other foe. There does not exist, 
and there never has existed, on the wide earth a more 
perfect type of dauntless courage than such a hound. 
Not Gushing when he steered his little launch through 
the black night against the great ram Albemarle, not 
Guster dashing into the valley of the Rosebud to die 
with all his men, not Farragut himself lashed in the 
rigging of the Hartford as she forged past the forts to 
encounter her ironclad foe, can stand as a more perfect 
type of dauntless valor. 

368 



WOLVES AND WOLF-HOUNDS 

Once I had the good fortune to witness a very ex- 
citing hunt of this character among the foot-hills of the 
northern Rockies. I was staying at the house of a 
friendly cowman, whom I will call Judge Yancy Stump. 
Judge Yancy Stump was a Democrat who, as he phrased 
it, had fought for his Democracy; that is, he had been 
in the Confederate Army. He was at daggers drawn 
with his nearest neighbor, a cross-grained mountain 
farmer, who may be known as Old Man Prindle. Old 
Man Prindle had been in the Union Army, and his 
Republicanism was of the blackest and most uncom- 
promising type. There was one point, however, on 
which the two came together. They were exceedingly 
fond of hunting with hounds. The Judge had three 
or four track-hounds, and four of what he called swift- 
hounds, the latter including one pure-bred greyhound 
bitch of wonderful speed and temper, a dun-colored 
yelping animal which was a cross between a greyhound 
and a foxhound, and two others that were crosses 
between a greyhound and a wire-haired Scotch deer- 
hound. Old Man Prindle's contribution to the pack 
consisted of two immense brindled mongrels of great 
strength and ferocious temper. They were unlike any 
dogs I have ever seen in this country. Their mother 
herself was a cross between a bull mastiff and a New- 
foundland, while the father was described as being a 
big dog that belonged to a "Dutch Count." The 
"Dutch Count" was an outcast German noble, who 
had drifted to the West, and, after failing in the mines 
and failing in the cattle country, had died in a squalid 
log shanty while striving to eke out an existence as a 
hunter among the foot-hills. His dog, I presume, from 
the description given me, must have been a boar-hound 
or Ulm dog. 

369 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

As I was very anxious to see a wolf-hunt the Judge 
volunteered to get one up, and asked Old Man Prindle 
to assist, for the sake of his two big fighting dogs; 
though the very names of the latter, General Grant 
and Old Abe, were gall and wormwood to the unrecon- 
structed soul of the Judge. Still they were the only dogs 
anywhere around capable of tackling a savage timber- 
wolf, and without their aid the Judge's own high- 
spirited animals ran a serious risk of injury, for they 
were altogether too game to let any beast escape with- 
out a struggle. 

Luck favored us. Two wolves had killed a calf and 
dragged it into a long patch of dense brush where there 
was a little spring, the whole furnishing admirable cover 
for any wild beast. Early in the morning we started 
on horseback for this bit of cover, which was some 
three miles off. The party consisted of the Judge, 
Old Man Prindle, a cowboy, myself, and the dogs. 
The Judge and I carried our rifles and the cowboy his 
revolver, but Old Man Prindle had nothing but a heavy 
whip, for he swore, with many oaths, that no one 
should interfere with his big dogs, for by themselves 
they would surely "make the wolf feel sicker than a 
stuck hog." Our shaggy ponies racked along at a five- 
mile gait over the dewy prairie -grass. The two big dogs 
trotted behind their master, grim and ferocious. The 
track-hounds were tied in couples, and the beautiful 
greyhounds loped lightly and gracefully alongside the 
horses. The country was fine. A mile to our right a 
small plains river wound in long curves between banks 
fringed with cottonwoods. Two or three miles to our 
left the foot-hills rose sheer and bare, with clumps of 
black pine and cedar in their gorges. We rode over 
gently rolling prairie, with here and there patches of 

370 



WOLVES AND WOLF-HOUNDS 

brush at the bottoms of the slopes around the dry- 
watercourses. 

At last we reached a somewhat deeper valley, in 
which the wolves were harbored. Wolves lie close in 
the daytime and will not leave cover if they can help 
it; and as they had both food and water within we 
knew it was most unlikely that this couple would be 
gone. The valley was a couple of hundred yards 
broad and three or four times as long, filled with a 
growth of ash and dwarf elm and cedar, thorny under- 
brush choking the spaces between. Posting the cow- 
boy, to whom he gave his rifle, with two greyhounds on 
one side of the upper end, and Old Man Prindle with 
two others on the opposite side, while I was left at the 
lower end to guard against the possibility of the wolves 
breaking back, the Judge himself rode into the thicket 
near me and loosened the track-hounds to let them 
find the wolves' trail. The big dogs also were uncoupled 
and allowed to go in with the hounds. Their power of 
scent was very poor, but they were sure to be guided 
aright by the baying of the hounds, and their presence 
would give confidence to the latter and make them ready 
to rout the wolves out of the thicket, which they would 
probably have shrunk from doing alone. There was a 
moment's pause of expectation after the Judge entered 
the thicket with his hounds. We sat motionless on our 
horses, eagerly looking through the keen fresh morning 
air. Then a clamorous baying from the thicket, in 
which both the horseman and dogs had disappeared, 
showed that the hounds had struck the trail of their 
quarry and were running on a hot scent. For a couple 
of minutes we could not be quite certain which way 
the game was going to break. The hounds ran zigzag 
through the brush, as we could tell by their baying, 

371 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

and once some yelping and a great row showed that 
they had come rather closer than they had expected 
upon at least one of the wolves. 

In another minute, however, the latter found it too 
hot for them and bolted from the thicket. My first 
notice of this was seeing the cowboy, who was standing 
by the side of his horse, suddenly throw up his rifle and 
fire, while the greyhounds who had been springing high 
in the air, half maddened by the clamor in the thicket 
below, for a moment dashed off the wrong way, confused 
by the report of the gun. I rode for all I was worth 
to where the cowboy stood, and instantly caught a 
glimpse of two wolves, grizzled-gray and brown, which, 
having been turned by his shot, had started straight 
over the hill across the plain toward the mountains 
three miles away. As soon as I saw them I also saw 
that the rearmost of the couple had been hit somewhere 
in the body and was lagging behind, the blood running 
from its flanks, while the two greyhounds were racing 
after it; and at the same moment the track-hounds 
and the big dogs burst out of the thicket, yelling 
savagely as they struck the bloody trail. The wolf was 
hard hit, and staggered as he ran. He did not have a 
hundred yards' start of the dogs, and in less than a 
minute one of the greyhounds ranged up and passed 
him with a savage snap that brought him to; and 
before he could recover the whole pack rushed at him. 
Weakened as he was, he could make no effective fight 
against so many foes, and indeed had a chance for but 
one or two rapid snaps before he was thrown down and 
completely covered by the bodies of his enemies. Yet 
with one of these snaps he did damage, as a shrill yell 
told, and in a second an overrash track-hound came 
out of the struggle with a deep gash across his shoulders. 

372 



WOLVES AND WOLF-HOUNDS 

The worrying, growling, and snarling were terrific, but 
in a minute the heaving mass grew motionless and the 
dogs drew off save one or two that still continued to 
worry the dead w^olf as it lay stark and stiff with glazed 
eyes and rumpled fur. 

No sooner were we satisfied that it was dead than 
the Judge, with cheers and oaths and crackings of his 
whip, urged the dogs after the other wolf. The two 
greyhounds that had been with Old Man Prindle had 
fortunately not been able to see the wolves when they 
first broke from the cover, and never saw the wounded 
wolf at all, starting off at full speed after the unwounded 
one the instant he topped the crest of the hill. He had 
taken advantage of a slight hollow and turned, and 
now the chase was crossing us half a mile away. With 
whip and spur we flew toward them, our two greyhounds 
stretching out in front and leaving us as if we were 
standing still, the track-hounds and big dogs running 
after them just ahead of the horses. Fortunately the 
wolf plunged for a moment into a little brushy hollow 
and again doubled back, and this gave us a chance 
to see the end of the chase from near by. The two 
greyhounds which had first taken up the pursuit were 
then but a short distance behind. Nearer they crept 
until they were within ten yards, and then with a 
tremendous race the little bitch ran past him and in- 
flicted a vicious bite in the big beast's ham. He 
whirled around like a top and his jaws clashed like 
those of a sprung bear trap, but, quick though he was, 
she was quicker and just cleared his savage rush. In 
another moment he resumed his flight at full speed, a 
speed which only that of the greyhounds exceeded; 
but almost immediately the second greyhound ranged 
alongside, and though he was not able to bite, because 

373 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the wolf kept running with its head turned around 
threatening him, yet by his feints he delayed the beast's 
flight so that in a moment or two the remaining couple 
of swift -hounds arrived on the scene. For a moment 
the wolf and all four dogs galloped along in a bunch; 
then one of the greyhounds, watching his chance, 
pinned the beast cleverly by the hock and threw him 
completely over. The others jumped on it in an instant; 
but rising by main strength the wolf shook himself free, 
catching one dog by the ear and tearing it half off. 
Then he sat down on his haunches and the greyhounds 
ranged themselves around him some twenty yards off, 
forming a ring which forbade his retreat, though they 
themselves did not dare touch him. However, the end 
was at hand. In another moment Old Abe and General 
Grant came running up at headlong speed and smashed 
into the wolf like a couple of battering-rams. He rose 
on his hind legs like a wrestler as they came at him, 
the greyhounds also rising and bouncing up and down 
like rubber balls. I could just see the wolf and the 
first big dog locked together, as the second one made 
good his throat-hold. In another moment over all 
three tumbled, while the greyhounds and one or two of 
the track-hounds jumped in to take part in the killing. 
The big dogs more than occupied the wolf's attention 
and took all the punishing, while in a trice one of 
the greyhounds, having seized him by the hind leg, 
stretched him out, and the others were biting his unde- 
fended belly. The snarling and yelling of the worry 
made a noise so fiendish that it was fairly blood-curdling; 
then it gradually died down, and the second wolf lay 
limp on the plain, killed by the dogs unassisted. This 
wolf was rather heavier and decidedly taller than either 
of the big dogs, with more sinewy feet and longer fangs. 

374 



WOLVES AND WOLF-HOUNDS 

I have several times seen wolves run down and 
stopped by greyhounds after a breakneck gallop and 
a wildly exciting finish, but this was the only occasion 
on which I ever saw the dogs kill a big full-grown he 
wolf unaided. Nevertheless various friends of mine own 
packs that have performed the feat again and again. 
One pack, formerly kept at Fort Benton until wolves 
in that neighborhood became scarce, had nearly seventy- 
five to its credit, most of them killed without any as- 
sistance from the hunter; killed moreover by the 
greyhounds alone, there being no other dogs with the 
pack. These greyhounds were trained to the throat- 
hold, and did their own killing in fine style; usually 
six or eight were slipped together. General Miles in- 
forms me that he once had great fun in the Indian 
Territory hunting wolves with a pack of greyhounds. 
They had with the pack a large stub-tailed mongrel, 
of doubtful ancestry but most undoubted fighting 
capacity. When the wolf was started the greyhounds 
were sure to overtake it in a mile or two; they would 
then bring it to a halt and stand around it in a ring 
until the fighting dog came up. The latter promptly 
tumbled on the wolf, grabbing him anywhere, and often 
getting a terrific wound himself at the same time. As 
soon as he had seized the wolf and was rolling over 
with him in the grapple, the other dogs joined in the 
fray and despatched the quarry without much danger 
to themselves. 

During the last decade many ranchmen in Colorado, 
Wyoming, and Montana have developed packs of grey- 
hounds able to kill a wolf unassisted. Greyhounds 
trained for this purpose always seize by the throat; 
and the light dogs used for coursing jack-rabbits are 
not of much service, smooth or rough-haired greyhounds 

375 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

and deerhounds standing over thirty inches at the 
shoulder and weighing over ninety pounds being the 
only ones that, together with speed, courage, and en- 
durance, possess the requisite power. 

One of the most famous packs in the West was that 
of the Sun River Hound Club, in Montana, started by 
the stockmen of Sun River to get rid of the curse of 
wolves which infested the neighborhood and worked 
very serious damage to the herds and flocks. The pack 
was composed of both greyhounds and deerhounds, 
the best being from the kennels of Colonel Williams 
and of Mr. Van Hummel, of Denver; they were handled 
by an old plainsman and veteran wolf-hunter named 
Porter. In the season of '86 the astonishing number 
of 146 wolves were killed with these dogs. Ordinarily, 
as soon as the dogs seized a wolf, and threw or held it, 
Porter rushed in and stabbed it with his hunting-knife; 
one day, when out with six hounds, he thus killed no 
less than twelve out of the fifteen wolves started, though 
one of the greyhounds was killed and all the others 
were cut and exhausted. But often the wolves were 
killed without his aid. The first time the two biggest 
hounds — deerhounds or wire-haired greyhounds — were 
tried, when they had been at the ranch only three days, 
they performed such a feat. A large wolf had killed 
and partially eaten a sheep in a corral close to the 
ranch-house, and Porter started on the trail, and fol- 
lowed him at a jog-trot nearly ten miles before the 
hounds sighted him. Running but a few rods, he 
turned viciously to bay, and the two great greyhounds 
struck him like stones hurled from a catapult, throwing 
him as they fastened on his throat; they held him down 
and strangled him before he could rise, two other hounds 
getting up just in time to help at the end of the worry. 

376 



WOLVES AND WOLF-HOUNDS 

Ordinarily, however, no two greyhounds or deer- 
hounds are a match for a gray wolf, but I have known 
of several instances in Colorado, Wyoming, and 
Montana in which three strong veterans have killed 
one. The feat can only be performed by big dogs of 
the highest courage, who all act together, rush in at 
top speed, and seize by the throat; for the strength 
of the quarry is such that otherwise he will shake off 
the dogs, and then speedily kill them by rapid snaps 
with his terribly armed jaws. Where possible, half a 
dozen dogs should be slipped at once, to minimize the 
risk of injury to the pack: unless this is done, and unless 
the hunter helps the dogs in the worry, accidents will 
be frequent and an occasional wolf will be found able 
to beat off, maiming or killing, a lesser number of 
assailants. Some hunters prefer the smooth grey- 
hound, because of its great speed, and others the wire- 
coated animal, the rough deerhound, because of its 
superior strength; both, if of the right kind, are daunt- 
less fighters. 

Colonel Williams's greyhounds have performed many 
noble feats in wolf-hunting. He spent the winter of 
1875 in the Black Hills, which at that time did not 
contain a single settler and fairly swarmed with game. 
Wolves were especially numerous and very bold and 
fierce, so that the dogs of the party were continually 
in jeopardy of their lives. On the other hand they took 
an ample vengeance, for many wolves were caught 
by the pack. Whenever possible, the horsemen kept 
close enough to take an immediate hand in the fight, 
if the quarry was a full-grown wolf, and thus save the 
dogs from the terrible punishment they were otherwise 
certain to receive. The dogs invariably throttled, rush- 
ing straight at the throat, but the wounds they them- 

377 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

selves received were generally in the flank or belly; 
in several instances these wounds resulted fatally. Once 
or twice a wolf was caught and held by two greyhounds 
until the horsemen came up; but it took at least five 
dogs to overcome and slay unaided a big timber-wolf. 
Several times the feat was performed by a party of 
five, consisting of two greyhounds, one rough-coated 
deerhound, and two cross-bloods; and once by a litter 
of seven young greyhounds, not yet come to their full 
strength. 

Once or twice the so-called Russian wolf-hounds, or 
silky -coated greyhounds, the "borzois," have been im- 
ported and tried in wolf-hunting on the Western plains; 
but hitherto they have not shown themselves equal, 
at either running or fighting, to the big American-bred 
greyhounds of the type produced by Colonel Williams 
and certain others of our best Western breeders. Indeed 
I have never known any foreign greyhounds, whether 
Scotch, English, or from Continental Europe, to per- 
form such feats of courage, endurance, and strength, 
in chasing and killing dangerous game, as the home- 
bred greyhounds of Colonel Williams. 



378 



XX 

IN COWBOY LAND 

Out on the frontier, and generally among those who 
spend their lives in, or on the borders of, the wilderness, 
life is reduced to its elemental conditions. The passions 
and emotions of these grim hunters of the mountains, 
and wild rough-riders of the plains, are simpler and 
stronger than those of people dwelling in more compli- 
cated states of society. As soon as the communities 
become settled and begin to grow with any rapidity, 
the American instinct for law asserts itself; but in the 
earlier stages each individual is obliged to be a law to 
himself and to guard his rights with a strong hand. 
Of course the transition periods are full of incongruities. 
Men have not yet adjusted their relations to morality 
and law with any niceness. They hold strongly by 
certain rude virtues, and on the other hand they quite 
fail to recognize even as shortcomings not a few traits 
that obtain scant mercy in older communities. Many 
of the desperadoes, the man-killers, and road-agents 
have good sides to their characters. Often they are 
people who, in certain stages of civilization, do, or have 
done, good work, but who, when these stages have 
passed, find themselves surrounded by conditions which 
accentuate their worst qualities and make their best 
qualities useless. The average desperado, for instance, 
has, after all, much the same standard of morals that 
the Norman nobles had in the days of the battle of 
Hastings, and, ethically and morally, he is decidedly 
in advance of the vikings, who were the ancestors of 

379 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

these same nobles — and to whom, by the way, he 
himself could doubtless trace a portion of his blood. 
If the transition from the wild lawlessness of life in 
the wilderness or on the border to a higher civilization 
were stretched out over a term of centuries, he and his 
descendants would doubtless accommodate themselves 
by degrees to the changing circumstances. But un- 
fortunately in the far West the transition takes place 
with marvellous abruptness, and at an altogether un- 
heard-of speed, and many a man's nature is unable to 
change with sufficient rapidity to allow him to har- 
monize with his environment. In consequence, unless 
he leaves for still wilder lands, he ends by getting 
hanged instead of founding a family which would revere 
his name as that of a very capable, although not in all 
respects a conventionally moral, ancestor. 

Most of the men with whom I was intimately thrown 
during my life on the frontier and in the wilderness 
were good fellows, hard-working, brave, resolute, and 
truthful. At times, of course, they were forced of 
necessity to do deeds which would seem startling to 
dwellers in cities and in old settled places; and though 
they waged a very stern and relentless warfare upon 
evil-doers whose misdeeds had immediate and tangible 
bad results, they showed a wide toleration of all save 
the most extreme classes of wrong, and were not given 
to inquiring too curiously into a strong man's past, or 
to criticising him overharshly for a failure to discrimi- 
nate in finer ethical questions. Moreover, not a few of 
the men with whom I came in contact — with some of 
whom my relations were very close and friendly — had 
at different times led rather tough careers. This was 
accepted by them and by their companions as a fact, 
and — nothing more. There were certain offenses, such 

380 



IN COWBOY LAND 

as rape, the robbery of a friend, or murder under cir- 
cumstances of cowardice and treachery, which were 
never forgiven; but the fact that when the country 
was wild a young fellow had gone on the road — that is, 
become a highwayman, or had been chief of a gang 
of desperadoes, horse-thieves, and cattle -killers — was 
scarcely held to weigh against him, being treated as a 
regrettable, but certainly not shameful, trait of youth. 
He was regarded by his neighbors with the same kindly 
tolerance which respectable mediaeval Scotch borderers 
doubtless extended to their wilder young men who 
would persist in raiding English cattle even in time of 
peace. 

Of course if these men were asked outright as to 
their stories they would have refused to tell them or 
else would have lied about them; but when they had 
grown to regard a man as a friend and companion they 
would often recount various incidents of their past 
lives with perfect frankness, and as they combined in 
a very curious degree both a decided sense of humor 
and a failure to appreciate that there was anything 
especially remarkable in what they related, their tales 
were always entertaining. 

Early one spring, now nearly ten years ago, I was 
out hunting some lost horses. They had strayed from 
the range three months before, and we had in a round- 
about way heard that they were ranging near some 
broken country, where a man named Brophy had a 
ranch, nearly fifty miles from my own. When I started 
thither the weather was warm, but the second day out 
it grew colder and a heavy snow-storm came on. For- 
tunately I was able to reach the ranch all right, finding 
there one of the sons of a Little Beaver ranchman, and 
a young cow-puncher belonging to a Texas outfit, 

381 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

whom I knew very well. After putting my horse into 
the corral and throwing him down some hay I strode 
into the low hut, made partly of turf and partly of 
Cottonwood logs, and speedily warmed myself before 
the fire. We had a good warm supper, of bread, po- 
tatoes, fried venison, and tea. My two companions 
grew very sociable and began to talk freely over their 
pipes. There were two bunks one above the other. 
I climbed into the upper, leaving my friends, who oc- 
cupied the lower, sitting together on a bench recounting 
different incidents in the careers of themselves and 
their cronies during the winter that had just passed. 
Soon one of them asked the other what had become of a 
certain horse, a noted cutting pony, which I had myself 
noticed the preceding fall. The question aroused the 
other to the memory of a wrong which still rankled, 
and he began (I alter one or two of the proper names) : 
"Why, that was the pony that got stole. I had been 
workin' him on rough ground when I was out with the 
Three Bar outfit and he went tender forward, so I 
turned him loose by the Lazy B ranch, and when I 
came back to git him there wasn't anybody at the ranch 
and I couldn't find him. The sheep-man who lives 
about two miles west, under Red Clay butte, told me 
he seen a fellow in a wolfskin coat, ridin' a pinto bronco 
with white eyes, leadin' that pony of mine just two 
days before; and I hunted round till I hit his trail and 
then I followed to where I'd reckoned he was headin' 
for — the Short Pine Hills. When I got there a rancher 
told me he had seen the man pass on towards Cedar- 
town, and sure enough when I struck Cedartown I 
found he lived there in a 'dobe house, just outside the 
town. There was a boom on the town and it looked 
pretty slick. There was two hotels and I went into 

382 



IN COWBOY LAND 

the first, and I says, * WTiere's the justice of the peace ? ' 
says I to the bartender. 

" 'There ain't no justice of the peace,' says he, *the 
justice of the peace got shot.' 

" 'Well, where's the constable?' says I. 
" '\Miy, it was him that shot the justice of the peace,' 
says he; 'he's skipped the country with a bunch of 
horses.' 

" 'Well, ain't there no ofl&cer of the law left in this 
town ? ' says I. 

" 'Why, of course,' says he, 'there's a probate judge; 
he is over tendin' bar at the Last Chance Hotel.' 

"So I went over to the Last Chance Hotel and I 
walked in there. 'Mornin',' says I. 
'Mornin',' says he. 

'You're the probate judge?' says I. 
' That's what I am,' says he. * What do you want ? ' 
says he. 

'I w^ant justice,' says I. 

What kind of justice do you want?' says he. 
'What's it for?' 

'It's for stealin' a horse,' says I. 
'Then by God you'll git it,' says he. 'WTio stole 
the horse?' says he. 

'It is a man that lives in a 'dobe house, just outside 
the town there,' says I. 

'Well, where do you come from yourself?' said he. 
'From Medory,' said I. 
'With that he lost interest and settled kind o' back, 
and says he, 'There won't no Cedartown jury hang a 
Cedartown man for stealin' a Medory man's horse,' 
said he. 

'Well, what am I to do about my horse?' says I. 
'Do?' says he; 'well, you know where the man 

383 



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THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

lives, don't you?' says he; *then sit up outside his 
house to-night and shoot him when he comes in,' says 
he, 'and skip out with the horse.' 

" *A11 right,' says I, 'that is what I'll do,' and I 
walked off. 

"So I went off to his house and I laid down behind 
some sage-bushes to wait for him. He was not at home, 
but I could see his wife movin' about inside now and 
then, and I waited and waited, and it growed darker, 
and I begun to say to myself, 'Now here you are lyin' 
out to shoot this man when he comes home; and it's 
gettin' dark, and you don't know him, and if you do 
shoot the next man that comes into that house, like 
as not it won't be the fellow you're after at all, but 
some perfectly innocent man a-comin' there after the 
other man's wife ! ' 

"So I up and saddled the bronc' and Ht out for 
home," concluded the narrator with the air of one 
justly proud of his own self -abnegating virtue. 

The "town" where the judge above mentioned dwelt 
was one of those squalid, pretentiously named little 
clusters of makeshift dwellings which on the edge of 
the wild country spring up with the rapid growth of 
mushrooms, and are often no longer-lived. In their 
earlier stages these towns are frequently built entirely 
of canvas, and are subject to grotesque calamities. 
When the territory purchased from the Sioux, in the 
Dakotas, a couple of years ago, was thrown open to 
settlement there was a furious inrush of men on horse- 
back and in wagons, and various ambitious cities 
sprang up overnight. The new settlers were all under 
the influence of that curious craze which causes every 
true Westerner to put unlimited faith in the unknown 
and untried; many had left all they had in a far better 

384 



IN COWBOY LAND 

farming country, because they were true to their im- 
memorial beHef that, wherever they were, their luck 
would be better if they went somewhere else. They 
were always on the move, and headed for the vague 
beyond. As miners see visions of all the famous mines 
of history in each new camp, so these would-be city- 
founders saw future St. Pauls and Omahas in every 
forlorn group of tents pitched by some muddy stream 
in a desert of gumbo and sage-brush; and they named 
both the towns and the canvas buildings in accordance 
with their bright hopes for the morrow rather than 
with reference to the mean facts of the day. One of 
these towns, which when twenty -four hours old boasted 
of six saloons, a "court-house," and an "opera-house," 
was overwhelmed by early disaster. The third day of 
its life a whirlwind came along and took off the opera- 
house and half the saloons; and the following evening 
lawless men nearly finished the work of the elements. 
The riders of a huge trail outfit from Texas, to their 
glad surprise, discovered the town and abandoned them- 
selves to a night of roaring and lethal carousal. Next 
morning the city authorities were lamenting, with oaths 
of bitter rage, that "them hell-and-twenty Flying A 
cow-punchers had cut the court-house up into pants." 
It was true. The cowboys were in need of chaps and, 
with an admirable mixture of adventurousness, frugal- 
ity, and ready adaptability to circumstances, had made 
substitutes therefor in the shape of canvas overalls, cut 
from the roof and walls of the shaky temple of justice. 
One of my valued friends in the mountains, and one 
of the best hunters with whom I ever travelled, was a 
man who had a peculiarly light-hearted way of looking 
at conventional social obligations. Though in some 
ways a true backwoods Donatello, he was a man of 

385 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

much shrewdness and of great courage and resolution. 
Moreover, he possessed what only a few men do possess, 
the capacity to tell the truth. He saw facts as they 
were, and could tell them as they were, and he never 
told an untruth unless for very weighty reasons. He 
was pre-eminently a philosopher, of a happy, sceptical 
turn of mind. He had no prejudices. He never looked 
down, as so many hard characters do, upon a person 
possessing a different code of ethics. His attitude was 
one of broad, genial tolerance. He saw nothing out of 
the way in the fact that he had himself been a road- 
agent, a professional gambler, and a desperado at 
different stages of his career. On the other hand, he 
did not in the least hold it against any one that he 
had always acted within the law. At the time that I 
knew him he had become a man of some substance, and 
naturally a stanch upholder of the existing order of 
things. But while he never boasted of his past deeds, 
he never apologized for them, and evidently would 
have been quite as incapable of understanding that 
they needed an apology as he would have been incapable 
of being guilty of mere vulgar boastfulness. He did 
not often allude to his past career at all. When he did, 
he recited its incidents perfectly naturally and simply, 
as events, without any reference to or regard for their 
ethical significance. It was this quality which made 
him at times a specially pleasant companion, and al- 
ways an agreeable narrator. The point of his story, 
or what seemed to him the point, was rarely that 
which struck me. It was the incidental side-lights the 
story threw upon his own nature and the somewhat 
lurid surroundings amid which he had moved. 

On one occasion when we were out together we killed 
a bear and, after skinning it, took a bath in a lake. 

386 



IN COWBOY LAND 

I noticed he had a scar on the side of his foot and 
asked him how he got it, to which he responded, with 
indifference : 

*'Oh, that? Why, a man shootin' at me to make 
me dance, that was all." 

I expressed some curiosity in the matter, and he 
went on: 

"Well, the way of it was this: It was when I was 
keeping a saloon in New Mexico, and there was a man 
there by the name of Fowler, and there was a reward 
on him of three thousand dollars '* 

"Put on him by the State?" 



*'No, put on by his wife," said my friend; "and there 
was this " 

"Hold on," I interrupted; "put on by his wife, did 
you say?" 

"Yes, by his wife. Him and her had been keepin' a 
faro-bank, you see, and they quarrelled about it, so 
she just put a reward on him, and so " 

"Excuse me," I said, "but do you mean to say that 
this reward was put on publicly?" to which my friend 
answered, with an air of gentlemanly boredom at being 
interrupted to gratify my thirst for irrelevant detail: 

"Oh, no, not publicly. She just mentioned it to 
six or eight intimate personal friends." 

"Go on," I responded, somewhat overcome by this 
instance of the primitive simplicity with which New 
Mexican matrimonial disputes were managed, and he 
continued : 

"Well, two men come ridin* in to see me to borrow 
my guns. My guns was Colt's self-cockers. It was 
a new thing then, and they was the only ones in town. 
These come to me, and 'Simpson,' says they, 'we want 
to borrow your guns; we are goin' to kill Fowler.' 

387 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

" *Hold on for a moment,' said I, 'I am willin' to 
lend you them guns, but I ain't goin' to know what 
you'r' goin' to do with them — no, sir; but of course you 
can have the guns.' " Here my friend's face hghtened 
pleasantly, and he continued: 

"Well, you may easily believe I felt surprised next 
day when Fowler come ridin' in, and, says he, * Simpson, 
here's your guns. ' He had shot them two men ! ' Well, 
Fowler,' says I, 'if I had known them men was after 
you, I'd never have let them have them guns nohow,' 
says I. That wasn't true, for I did know it, but there 
was no cause to tell him that." I murmured my ap- 
proval of such prudence, and Simpson continued, his 
eyes gradually brightening with the light of agreeable 
reminiscence: 

"Well, they up and they took Fowler before the 
justice of the peace. The justice of the peace was a 
Turk." 

"Now, Simpson, what do you mean by that.^^" I 
interrupted. 

"Well, he come from Turkey," said Simpson, and 
I again sank back, wondering briefly what particular 
variety of Mediterranean outcast had drifted down 
to Mexico to be made a justice of the peace. Simpson 
laughed and continued: "That Fowler was a funny 
fellow. The Turk, he committed Fowler, and Fowler, 
he riz up and knocked him down and tromped all over 
him and made him et him go !" 

"That was an appeal to a higher law," I observed. 
Simpson assented cheerily, and continued: 

"Well, that Turk, he got nervous for fear Fowler 
he was goin' to kill him, and so he comes to me and 
offers me twenty-five dollars a day to protect him from 
Fowler; and I went to Fowler, and 'Fowler,' says I, 

388 



IN COWBOY LAND 

*that Turk's offered me twenty-five dollars a day to 
protect him from you. Now, I ain't goin' to get shot 
for no twenty-five dollars a day, and if you are goin' 
to kill the Turk, just say so and go and do it; but if you 
ain't goin' to kill the Turk, there's no reason why I 
shouldn't earn that twenty-five dollars a day ! ' and 
Fowler, says he, *I ain't goin' to touch the Turk; you 
just go right ahead and protect him.' " 

So Simpson "protected" the Turk from the imagi- 
nary danger of Fowler, for about a week, at twenty-five 
dollars a day. Then one evening he happened to go 
out and met Fowler, "and," said he, "the moment I 
saw him I know he felt mean, for he begun to shoot at 
my feet," which certainly did seem to offer presump- 
tive evidence of meanness. Simpson continued : 

"I didn't have no gun, so I just had to stand there 
and take it until something distracted his attention, 
and I w^ent off home to get my gun and kill him, but 
I wanted to do it perfectly lawful; so I went up to 
the mayor (he was playin' poker with one of the judges), 
and says I to him, 'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'I am goin' to 
shoot Fowler.' And the mayor he riz out of his chair 
and he took me by the hand, and says he, *Mr. Simpson, 
if you do I wiU stand by you'; and the judge, he says, 
'I'll go on your bond.' " 

Fortified by this cordial approval of the executive 
and judicial branches of the government, Mr. Simpson 
started on his quest. Meanwhile, however, Fowler had 
cut up another prominent citizen, and they already 
had him in jail. The friends of law and order, feeling 
some little distrust as to the permanency of their own 
zeal for righteousness, thought it best to settle the 
matter before there was time for cooling, and ac- 
cordingly, headed by Simpson, the mayor, the judge, 

389 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the Turk, and other prominent citizens of the town, 
they broke into the jail and hanged Fowler. The 
point in the hanging which especially tickled my friend's 
fancy as he lingered over the reminiscence, was one 
that was rather too ghastly to appeal to our own sense 
of humor. In the Turk's mind there still rankled the 
memory of Fowler's very unprofessional conduct while 
figuring before him as a criminal. Said Simpson, with 
a merry twinkle of the eye: "Do you know, that Turk 
he was a right funny fellow too after all. Just as the 
boys were going to string up Fowler, says he, *Boys, 
stop; one moment, gentlemen — Mr. Fowler, good-by,' 
and he blew a kiss to him !" 

In the cow country, and elsewhere on the wild border- 
land between savagery and civilization, men go quite as 
often by nicknames as by those to which they are law- 
fully entitled. Half the cowboys and hunters of my 
acquaintance are known by names entirely unconnected 
with those they inherited or received when they were 
christened. Occasionally some would-be desperado or 
make-believe mighty hunter tries to adopt what he 
deems a title suitable to his prowess ; but such an effort 
is never attempted in really wild places, where it would 
be greeted with huge derision; for all of these names 
that are genuine are bestowed by outsiders, with small 
regard to the wishes of the person named. Ordinarily 
the name refers to some easily recognizable accident 
of origin, occupation, or aspect; as witness the innumer- 
able Dutcheys, Frencheys, Kentucks, Texas Jacks, 
Bronco Bills, Bear Joes, Buckskins, Red Jims, and the 
like. Sometimes it is apparently meaningless; one of 
my cow-puncher friends is always called "Sliver" or 
"Splinter" — why, I have no idea. At other times some 
particular incident may give rise to the title: a clean- 

390 



IN COWBOY LAND 

looking cowboy formerly in my employ was always 
known as "Muddy Bill," because he had once been 
bucked off his horse into a mud-hole. 

The gruesome genesis of one such name is given in the 
following letter which I have just received from an old 
hunting friend in the Rockies, who took a kindly interest 
in a frontier cabin which the Boone and Crockett Club 
was putting up at the Chicago World's Fair: 

"Feb 16th 1893; Der Sir: I see in the newspapers 
that your club the Daniel Boon and Davey Crockit 
you Intend to erect a fruntier Cabin at the world's Far 
at Chicago to represent the erley Pianears of our country 
I would like to see you maik a success I have all my life 
been a fruntiersman and feel interested in your under- 
taking and I hoap you wile get a good assortment of 
relicks I want to maik one suggestion to you that is 
in regard to geting a good man and a genuine Maun- 
tanner to take charg of your haus at Chicago I want 
to recommend a man for you to get it is Liver-eating 
Johnson that is the naim he is generally called he is an 
olde mauntneer and large and fine looking and one of 
the Best Story Tellers in the country and Very Polight 
genteel to every one he meets I wil tel you how he got 
that naim Liver-eating in a hard Fight with the Black 
Feet Indians thay Faught all day Johnson and a few 
Whites Faught a large Body of Indians all day after 
the fight Johnson cam in contact with a wounded 
Indian and Johnson was aut of ammunition and thay 
faught it out with thar Knives and Johnson got away 
with the Indian and in the fight cut the livver out of 
the Indian and said to the Boys did thay want any 
Liver to eat that is the way he got the naim of Liver- 
eating Johnson » Yours trulv" etc etc 

391 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

Frontiersmen are often as original in their theories 
of hfe as in their names; and the originahty may take 
the form of wild savagery, of mere uncouthness, or of 
an odd combination of genuine humor with simple 
acceptance of facts as they are. On one occasion I 
expressed some surprise at learning that a certain Mrs. 
P. had suddenly married, though her husband was alive 
and in jail in a neighboring town; and received for 
answer: *'Well, you see, old man Pete he skipped the 
country, and left his widow behind him, and so Bob 
Evans he up and married her!" — which was evidently 
felt to be a proceeding requiring no explanation what- 
ever. 

In the cow country there is nothing more refreshing 
than the light-hearted belief entertained by the average 
man to the effect that any animal which by main force 
has been saddled and ridden, or harnessed and driven 
a couple of times, is a "broke horse." My present 
foreman is firmly wedded to this idea, as well as to its 
complement, the belief that any animal with hoofs, 
before any vehicle with wheels, can be driven across 
any country. One summer on reaching the ranch I 
was entertained with the usual accounts of the ad- 
ventures and misadventures which had befallen my 
own men and my neighbors since I had been out last. 
In the course of the conversation my foreman re- 
marked: "We had a great time out here about six 
weeks ago. There was a professor from Ann Arbor 
came out with his wife to see the Bad Lands, and they 
asked if we could rig them up a team, and we said 
we guessed we could, and Foley's boy and I did; but 
it ran away with him and broke his leg ! He was here 
for a month. I guess he didn't mind it though." Of 
this I was less certain, forlorn little Medora being a 

392 



IN COWBOY LAND 

"busted" cow town, concerning which I once heard 
another of my men remark, in reply to an inquisitive 
commercial traveller: "How many people lives here? 
Eleven — counting the chickens — when they're all in 
town!" 

My foreman continued: "By George, there was 
something that professor said afterward that made me 
feel hot. I sent word up to him by Foley's boy that 
seein' as how it had come out we wouldn't charge him 
no thin' for the rig; and that professor he answered 
that he was glad we were showing him some sign of 
consideration, for he'd begun to believe he'd fallen into 
a den of sharks, and that we gave him a runaway team 
a purpose. That made me hot, calling that a runaway 
team. Why, there was one of them horses never could 
have run away before; it hadn't never been druv but 
twice ! And the other horse maybe had run away a few 
times, but there was lots of times he hadn't run away. 
I esteemed that team full as liable not to run away as 
it was to run away," concluded my foreman, evidently 
deeming this as good a warranty of gentleness in a 
horse as the most exacting could possibly require. 

The definition of good behavior on the frontier is 
even more elastic for a saddle-horse than for a team. 
Last spring one of the Three-Seven riders, a magnificent 
horseman, was killed on the round-up near Belfield, 
his horse bucking and falling on him. "It was accounted 
a plumb gentle horse too," said my informant, "only 
it sometimes sulked and acted a little mean when it 
was cinched up behind." The unfortunate rider did 
not know of this failing of the "plumb gentle horse," 
and as soon as he was in the saddle it threw itself over 
sideways with a great bound, and he fell on his head, 
and never spoke again. 

393 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

Such accidents are too common in the wild country to 
attract very much attention ; the men accept them with 
grim quiet, as inevitable in such lives as theirs — lives 
that are harsh and narrow in their toil and their pleasure 
alike, and that are ever bounded by an iron horizon 
of hazard and hardship. During the last year and a 
half three other men from the ranches in my immediate 
neighborhood have met their deaths in the course of 
their work. One, a trail boss of the O X, was drowned 
while swimming his herd across a swollen river. An- 
other, one of the fancy ropers of the W Bar, was killed 
while roping cattle in a corral; his saddle turned, the 
rope twisted round him, he was pulled off, and was 
trampled to death by his own horse. 

The fourth man, a cow-puncher named Hamilton, 
lost his life during the last week of October, 1891, in 
. the first heavy snow-storm of the season. Yet he was 
a skilled plainsman, on ground he knew well, and just 
before straying himself, he successfully instructed two 
men who did not know the country how to get to camp. 
They were all three with the round-up, and were making 
a circle through the Bad Lands; the wagons had camped 
on the eastern edge of these Bad Lands, where they 
merged into the prairie, at the head of an old disused 
road, which led about due east from the Little Missouri. 
It was a gray, lowering day, and as darkness came on 
Hamilton's horse played out, and he told his two com- 
panions not to wait, as it had begun to snow, but to 
keep on toward the north, skirting some particularly 
rough buttes, and as soon as they struck the road to 
turn to the right and follow it out to the prairie, where 
they would find camp; he particularly warned them 
to keep a sharp lookout, so as not to pass over the dim 
trail unawares in the dusk and the storm. They fol- 

394 



IN COWBOY LAND 

lowed his advice, and reached camp safely; and after 
they had left him nobody ever again saw him alive. 
Evidently he himself, plodding northward, passed over 
the road without seeing it in the gathering gloom; 
probably he struck it at some point where the ground 
was bad, and the dim trail in consequence disappeared 
entirely, as is the way with these prairie roads — 
making them landmarks to be used with caution. He 
must then have walked on and on, over rugged hills 
and across deep ravines, until his horse came to a 
standstill; he took off its saddle and picketed it to a 
dwarfed ash. Its frozen carcass was found with the 
saddle near by, two months later. He now evidently 
recognized some landmark, and realized that he had 
passed the road, and was far to the north of the round- 
up wagons; but he was a resolute, self-confident man, 
and he determined to strike out for a line camp, which 
he knew lay about due east of him, two or three miles 
out on the prairie, on one of the head branches of 
Eoiife River. Night must have fallen by this time, 
and he missed the camp, probably passing it within less 
than a mile; but he did pass it, and with it all hopes 
of life, and walked wearily on to his doom, through 
the thick darkness and the driving snow. At last his 
strength failed, and he lay down in the tall grass of 
a little hollow. Five months later, in the early spring, 
the riders from the line camp found his body, resting 
face downward, with the forehead on the folded arms. 

Accidents of less degree are common. Men break 
their collar-bones, arms, or legs by falling when riding 
at speed over dangerous ground, when cutting cattle 
or trying to control a stampeded herd, or by being 
thrown or rolled on by bucking or rearing horses; or 
their horses, and on rare occasions even they them- 

395 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

selves, are gored by fighting steers. Death by storm or 
in flood, death in striving to master a wild and vicious 
horse, or in handling maddened cattle, and too often 
death in brutal conflict with one of his own fellows — 
any one of these is the not unnatural end of the life 
of the dweller on the plains or in the mountains. 

But a few years ago other risks had to be run from 
savage beasts and from the Indians. Since I have 
been ranching on the Little Missouri two men have 
been killed by bears in the neighborhood of my range; 
and in the early years of my residence there, several 
men living or travelling in the country were slain by 
small war parties of young braves. All the old-time 
trappers and hunters could tell stirring tales of their 
encounters with Indians. 

My friend Tazewell Woody was among the chief 
actors in one of the most noteworthy adventures of this 
kind. He was a very quiet man, and it was exceedingly 
difficult to get him to talk over any of his past expe- 
riences; but one day, when he was in high good humor 
with me for having made three consecutive straight 
shots at elk, he became quite communicative, and I 
was able to get him to tell me one story which I had 
long wished to hear from his lips, having already heard 
of it through one of the other survivors of the incident. 
When he found that I already knew a good deal, old 
Woody told me the rest. 

It was in the spring of 1875, and Woody and two 
friends were trapping on the Yellowstone. The Sioux 
were very bad at the time and had killed many pros- 
pectors, hunters, cowboys, and settlers; the whites 
retaliated whenever they got a chance, but, as always 
in Indian warfare, the sly, lurking, bloodthirsty savages 
inflicted much more loss than they suffered. 

396 



IN COWBOY LAND 

The three men, having a dozen horses with them, 
were camped by the riverside in a triangular patch of 
brush, shaped a good deal like a common flatiron. On 
reaching camp they started to put out their traps; 
and when he came back in the evening Woody in- 
formed his companions that he had seen a great deal 
of Indian sign, and that he believed there were Sioux 
in the neighborhood. His companions both laughed at 
him, assuring him that they were not Sioux at all but 
friendly Crows, and that they would be in camp next 
morning; '*and sure enough," said Woody, medita- 
tively, "they were in camp next morning." By dawn 
one of the men went down the river to look at some 
of the traps, while Woody started out to where the 
horses were, the third man remaining in camp to get 
breakfast. Suddenly two shots were heard down the 
river, and in another moment a mounted Indian swept 
toward the horses. Woody fired, but missed him, and 
he drove off five while Woody, running forward, suc- 
ceeded in herding the other seven into camp. Hardly 
had this been accomplished before the man who had 
gone down the river appeared, out of breath with his 
desperate run, having been surprised by several Indians, 
and just succeeding in making his escape by dodging 
from bush to bush, threatening his pursuers with his rifle. 

These proved to be but the forerunners of a great 
war party, for when the sun rose the hills around 
seemed black with Sioux. Had they chosen to dash 
right in on the camp, running the risk of losing several 
of their men in the charge, they could of course have 
eaten up the three hunters in a minute; but such a 
charge is rarely practised by Indians, who, although 
they are admirable in defensive warfare, and even in 
certain kinds of offensive movements, and although 

397 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

from their skill in hiding they usually inflict much more 
loss than they suffer when matched against white 
troops, are yet very reluctant to make any movement 
where the advantage gained must be offset by con- 
siderable loss of life. The three men thought they were 
surely doomed, but being veteran frontiersmen and 
long inured to every kind of hardship and danger, they 
set to work with cool resolution to make as effective a 
defense as possible, to beat off their antagonists if they 
might, and, if this proved impracticable, to sell their 
lives as dearly as they could. Having tethered the 
horses in a slight hollow, the only one w^hich offered 
any protection, each man crept out to a point of the 
triangular brush patch and lay down to await events. 
In a very short while the Indians began closing in 
on them, taking every advantage of cover, and then, 
both from their side of the river and from the opposite 
bank, opened a perfect fusillade, wasting their cartridges 
with a recklessness which Indians are apt to show when 
excited. The hunters could hear the hoarse commands 
of the chiefs, the war-whoops, and the taunts in broken 
English which some of the warriors hurled at them. 
Very soon all of their horses were killed, and the brush 
was fairly riddled by the incessant volleys; but the 
three men themselves, lying flat on the ground and 
well concealed, were not harmed. The more daring 
young warriors then began to creep toward the hunters, 
going stealthily from one piece of cover to the next; 
and now the whites in turn opened fire. They did not 
shoot recklessly, as did their foes, but coolly and 
quietly, endeavoring to make each shot tell. Said 
Woody: "I only fired seven times all day; I reckoned 
on getting meat every time I pulled trigger." They 
had an immense advantage over their enemies in 

398 



IN COWBOY LAND 

that, whereas they lay still and entirely concealed, the 
Indians of course had to move from cover to cover 
in order to approach, and so had at times to expose 
themselves. \Mien the whites fired at all they fired at 
a man, whether moving or motionless, whom they could 
clearly see, while the Indians could only shoot at the 
smoke, which imperfectly marked the position of their 
unseen foes. In consequence the assailants speedily 
found that it was a task of hopeless danger to try in 
such a manner to close in on three plains veterans, men 
of iron nerve and skilled in the use of the rifle. Yet 
some of the more daring crept up very close to the patch 
of brush, and one actually got inside of it, and was 
killed among the bedding that lay by the smouldering 
camp-fire. The wounded and such of the dead as did 
not lie in too exposed positions were promptly taken 
away by their comrades; but seven bodies fell into the 
hands of the three hunters. I asked Woody how many 
he himself had killed. He said he could only be sure 
of two that he got; one he shot in the head as he peeped 
over a bush, and the other he shot through the smoke as 
he attempted to rush in. "My ! How that Indian did 
yell !" said Woody retrospectively; "/^e was no great of 
a stoic." After two or three hours of this deadly skir- 
mishing, which resulted in nothing more serious to the 
whites than in two of them being slightly wounded, the 
Sioux became disheartened by the loss they were suf- 
fering and withdrew, confining themselves thereafter to 
a long range and harmless fusillade. WTien it was dark 
the three men crept out to the river-bed, and taking 
advantage of the pitchy night broke through the circle 
of their foes; they managed to reach the settlements 
without further molestation, having lost everything 
except their rifles. 

399 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

For many years one of the most important of the 
wilderness-dwellers was the West Point officer, and no 
man has played a greater part than he in the wild war- 
fare which opened the regions beyond the Mississippi 
to white settlement. Since 1879, there has been but 
little regular Indian fighting in the North, though there 
have been one or two very tedious and wearisome 
campaigns waged against the Apaches in the South. 
Even in the North, however, there have been occa- 
sional uprisings which had to be quelled by the regular 
troops. 

After my elk-hunt in September, 1891, I came out 
through the Yellowstone Park, as I have elsewhere re- 
lated, riding in company with a surveyor of the Bur- 
lington and Quincy Railroad, who was just coming in 
from his summer's work. It was the first of October. 
There had been a heavy snow-storm and the snow was 
still falling. Riding a stout pony each, and leading 
another packed with our bedding, etc., we broke our 
way from the upper to the middle geyser basin. Here 
we found a troop of the 1st Cavalry camped, under 
the command of old friends of mine. Captain Frank 
Edwards and Lieutenant (now Captain) John Pitcher. 
They gave us hay for our horses and insisted upon our 
stopping to lunch, with the ready hospitality always 
shown by army officers. After lunch we began ex- 
changing stories. My travelling companion, the sur- 
veyor, had that spring performed a feat of note, going 
through one of the canyons of the Bighorn for the 
first time. He went with an old mining inspector, the 
two of them dragging a cottonwood sledge over the ice. 
The walls of the canyon are so sheer and the water is 
so rough that it can be descended only when the stream 
is frozen. However, after six days' labor and hardship 

400 



IN COWBOY LAND 

the descent was accomplished; and the surveyor, in 
concluding, described his experience in going through 
the Crow Reservation. 

This turned the conversation upon Indians, and it 
appeared that both of our hosts had been actors in 
Indian scrapes which had attracted my attention at the 
time they occurred, as they took place among tribes 
that I knew and in a country which I had sometimes 
visited either when hunting or when purchasing horses 
for the ranch. The first, which occurred to Captain 
Edwards, happened late in 1886, at the time when the 
Crow medicine chief, Sword-Bearer, announced him- 
self as the Messiah of the Indian race, during one of the 
usual epidemics of ghost-dancing. Sword-Bearer de- 
rived his name from always wearing a medicine sword — 
that is, a sabre painted red. He claimed to possess 
magic power, and, thanks to the performance of many 
dexterous feats of juggling and the lucky outcome of 
certain prophecies, he deeply stirred the Indians, 
arousing the young warriors in particular to the highest 
pitch of excitement. They became sullen, began to 
paint, and armed themselves; and the agent and the 
settlers near by grew so apprehensive that the troops 
were ordered to go to the reservation. A body of 
cavalry, including Captain Edwards's troop, was ac- 
cordingly marched thither, and found the Crow war- 
riors, mounted on their war ponies and dressed in their 
striking battle garb, waiting upon a hill. 

The position of troops at the beginning of such an 
affair is always peculiarly difficult. The settlers round 
about are sure to clamor bitterly against them, no 
matter what they do, on the ground that they are not 
thorough enough and are showing favor to the savages, 
while on the other hand, even if they fight purely in 

401 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

self-defense, a large number of worthy but weak-minded 
sentimentalists in the East are sure to shriek about their 
having brutally attacked the Indians. The war author- 
ities always insist that they must not fire the first shot 
under any circumstances, and such were the orders 
at this time. The Crows on the hilltop showed a sullen 
and threatening front, and the troops advanced slowly 
toward them and then halted for a parley. 

Meanwhile a mass of black thunder-clouds gathering 
on the horizon threatened one of those cloudbursts of 
extreme severity and suddenness so characteristic of 
the plains country. While still trying to make arrange- 
ments for a parley, a horseman started out of the Crow 
ranks and galloped headlong down toward the troops. 
It was the medicine-chief, Sword-Bearer. He was 
painted and in his battle dress, wearing his war-bonnet 
of floating, trailing eagle feathers, while the plumes of 
the same bird were braided in the mane and tail of his 
fiery little horse. On he came at a gallop almost up to 
the troops and then began to circle around them, calling 
and singing and throwing his crimson sword into the 
air, catching it by the hilt as it fell. Twice he rode 
completely around the soldiers, who stood in uncer- 
tainty, not knowing what to make of his performance, 
and expressly forbidden to shoot at him. Then paying 
no further heed to them he rode back toward the Crows. 
It appears that he had told them that he would ride 
twice around the hostile force, and by his incantations 
would call down rain from heaven, which would make 
the hearts of the white men like water, so that they 
should go back to their homes. Sure enough, while the 
arrangements for the parley were still going forward, 
down came the cloudburst, drenching the command 
and making the ground on the hills in front nearly 

402 



IN COWBOY LAND 

impassable; and before it had dried a courier arrived 
with orders to the troops to go back to camp. 

This fulfilment of Sword-Bearer's prophecy of course 
raised his reputation to the zenith and the young men 
of the tribe prepared for war, while the older chiefs, 
who more fully realized the power of the whites, still 
hung back. When the troops next appeared they came 
upon the entire Crow force, the women and children 
with their teepees being off to one side beyond a little 
stream while almost all the warriors of the tribe were 
gathered in front. 

Sword-Bearer then started to repeat his former ride, 
to the intense irritation of the soldiers. Luckily, how- 
ever, this time some of his young men could not be 
restrained. They too began to ride near the troops, 
and one of them was unable to refrain from firing on 
Captain Edwards's troop, which was in the van. This 
gave the soldiers their chance. They instantly re- 
sponded with a volley, and Captain Edwards's troop 
charged. The fight lasted but a minute or two, for 
Sword-Bearer was struck by a bullet and fell, and as 
he had boasted himself invulnerable, and promised that 
his warriors should be invulnerable also if they would 
follow him, the hearts of the latter became as water and 
they broke in every direction. One of the amusing, 
though irritating, incidents of the affair was to see the 
plumed and painted warriors race headlong for the 
camp, plunge into the stream, wash off their war-paint, 
and remove their feathers; in another moment they 
would be stolidly sitting on the ground, with their 
blankets over their shoulders, rising to greet the pur- 
suing cavalry with unmoved composure and calm as- 
surances that they had always been friendly and had 
much disapproved the conduct of the young bucks 

403 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

who had just been scattered on the field outside. It 
was much to the credit of the disciphne of the army 
that no bloodshed followed the fight proper. The loss 
to the whites was small. 

The other incident, related by Lieutenant Pitcher, 
took place in 1890, near Tongue River, in northern 
Wyoming. The command with which he was serving 
was camped near the Cheyenne Reservation. One day 
two young Cheyenne bucks met one of the government 
herders and promptly killed him — in a sudden fit, 
half of ungovernable blood lust, half of mere ferocious 
light-heartedness. They then dragged his body into the 
brush and left it. The disappearance of the herder of 
course attracted attention, and a search was organized 
by the cavalry. At first the Indians stoutly denied all 
knowledge of the missing man; but when it became 
evident that the search-party would shortly find him, 
two or three of the chiefs joined them, and piloted them 
to where the body lay, and acknowledged that he had 
been murdered by two of their band, though at first 
they refused to give their names. The commander of 
the post demanded that the murderers be given up. 

The chiefs said that they were very sorry, that this 
could not be done, but that they were willing to pay 
over any reasonable number of ponies to make amends 
for the death. This offer was of course promptly re- 
fused, and the commander notified them that if they did 
not surrender the murderers by a certain time he would 
hold the whole tribe responsible and would promptly 
move out and attack them. Upon this the chiefs, after 
holding full counsel with the tribe, told the commander 
that they had no power to surrender the murderers, 
but that the latter had said that sooner than see their 
tribe involved in a hopeless struggle they would of 

404 



IN COWBOY LAND 

their own accord come in and meet the troops anywhere 
the latter chose to appoint, and die fighting. To this 
the commander responded: "All right; let them come 
into the agency in half an hour." The chiefs acquiesced, 
and withdrew. 

Immediately the Indians sent mounted messengers 
at speed from camp to camp, summoning all their 
people to witness the act of fierce self-doom; and soon 
the entire tribe of Cheyennes, many of them having 
their faces blackened in token of mourning, moved down 
and took up a position on the hillside close to the agency. 
At the appointed hour both young men appeared in 
their handsome war dress, galloped to the top of the 
hill near the encampment, and deliberately opened fire 
on the troops. The latter merely fired a few shots to 
keep the young desperadoes off, while Lieutenant 
Pitcher and a score of cavalrymen left camp to make 
a circle and drive them in; they did not wish to hurt 
them, but to capture and give them over to the Indians, 
so that the latter might be forced themselves to inflict 
the punishment. However, they were unable to ac- 
comphsh their purpose; one of the young braves went 
straight at them, firing his rifle and wounding the horse 
of one of the cavalrymen, so that, simply in self-defense, 
the latter had to fire a volley, which laid low the as- 
sailant; the other, his horse having been shot, was killed 
in the brush, fighting to the last. All the while, from 
the moment the two doomed braves appeared until they 
fell, the Cheyennes on the hillside had been steadily 
singing the death chant. When the young men had 
both died, and had thus averted the fate which their 
misdeeds would else have brought upon the tribe, the 
warriors took their bodies and bore them away for 
burial honors, the soldiers looking on in silence. Where 

405 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the slain men were buried the whites never knew; but 
all that night they listened to the dismal wailing of the 
dirges with which the tribesmen celebrated their gloomy 
funeral rites. 

Frontiersmen are not, as a rule, apt to be very super- 
stitious. They lead lives too hard and practical, and 
have too little imagination in things spiritual and super- 
natural. I have heard but few ghost-stories while living 
on the frontier, and these few were of a perfectly com- 
monplace and conventional type. 

But I once listened to a goblin-story which rather 
impressed me. It was told by a grizzled, weather-beaten 
old mountain hunter, named Bauman, who was born 
and had passed all his life on the frontier. He must 
have believed what he said, for he could hardly repress 
a shudder at certain points of the tale; but he was of 
German ancestry, and in childhood had doubtless been 
saturated with all kinds of ghost and goblin lore, so 
that many fearsome superstitions were latent in his 
mind; besides, he knew well the stories told by the 
Indian medicine-men in their winter camps, of the snow- 
walkers, and the spectres, and the formless evil beings 
that haunt the forest depths, and dog and waylay the 
lonely wanderer who after nightfall passes through the 
regions where they lurk; and it may be that when over- 
come by the horror of the fate that befell his friend, and 
when oppressed by the awful dread of the unknown, he 
grew to attribute, both at the time and still more in 
remembrance, weird and elfin traits to what was merely 
some abnormally wicked and cunning wild beast; but 
whether this was so or not, no man can say. 

When the event occurred Bauman was still a young 
man, and was trapping with a partner among the 
mountains dividing the forks of the Salmon from the 

406 



IN COWBOY LAND 

head of Wisdom River. Not having had much luck, 
he and his partner determined to go up into a particu- 
larly wild and lonely pass through which ran a small 
stream said to contain many beaver. The pass had an 
evil reputation because the year before a solitary hunter 
who had wandered into it was there slain, seemingly 
by a wild beast, the half-eaten remains being afterward 
found by some mining prospectors who had passed his 
camp only the night before. 

The memory of this event, however, weighed very 
lightly with the two trappers, who were as adventurous 
and hardy as others of their kind. They took their 
two lean mountain ponies to the foot of the pass, where 
they left them in an open beaver meadow, the rocky 
timber-clad ground being from thence onward im- 
practicable for horses. They then struck out on foot 
through the vast, gloomy forest, and in about four 
hours reached a little open glade where they concluded 
to camp, as signs of game were plenty. 

There was still an hour or two of daylight left, and 
after building a brush lean-to and throwing down 
and opening their packs, they started upstream. The 
country was very dense and hard to travel through, as 
there was much down timber, although here and there 
the sombre woodland was broken by small glades of 
mountain grass. At dusk they again reached camp. 
The glade in which it was pitched was not many yards 
wide, the tall, close-set pines and firs rising round it 
like a wall. On one side was a little stream, beyond 
which rose the steep mountain slopes, covered with the 
unbroken growth of the evergreen forest. 

They were surprised to find that during their short 
absence something, apparently a bear, had visited camp, 
and had rummaged about among their things, scattering 

407 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

the contents of their packs and in sheer wantonness de- 
stroying their lean-to. The footprints of the beast were 
quite plain, but at first they paid no particular heed to 
them, busying themselves with rebuilding the lean-to, 
laying out their beds and stores, and lighting the fire. 

While Bauman was making ready supper, it being 
already dark, his companion began to examine the 
tracks more closely, and soon took a brand from the 
fire to follow them up where the intruder had walked 
along a game trail after leaving the camp. When the 
brand flickered out, he returned and took another, 
repeating his inspection of the footprints very closely. 
Coming back to the fire, he stood by it a minute or 
two, peering out into the darkness, and suddenly re- 
marked: "Bauman, that bear has been walking on two 
legs." Bauman laughed at this, but his partner insisted 
that he was right, and upon again examining the tracks 
with a torch, they certainly did seem to be made by 
but two paws, or feet. However, it was too dark to 
make sure. After discussing whether the footprints 
could possibly be those of a human being, and coming 
to the conclusion that they could not be, the two men 
rolled up in their blankets and went to sleep under the 
lean-to. 

At midnight Bauman was awakened by some noise, 
and sat up in his blankets. As he did so his nostrils 
were struck by a strong wild-beast odor, and he caught 
the loom of a great body in the darkness at the mouth of 
the lean-to. 

Grasping his rifle, he fired at the vague, threatening 
shadow, but must have missed, for immediately after- 
ward he heard the smashing of the underwood as the 
thing, whatever it was, rushed off into the impenetrable 
blackness of the forest and the night. 

408 



IN COWBOY LAND 

After this the two men slept but Uttle, sitting up 
by the rekindled fire, but they heard nothing more. 
In the morning they started out to look at the few 
traps they had set the previous evening and to put out 
new ones. By an unspoken agreement they kept to- 
gether all day, and returned to camp toward evening. 

On nearing it they saw, hardly to their astonishment, 
that the lean-to had been again torn down. The visitor 
of the preceding day had returned and in wanton malice 
had tossed about their camp kit and bedding and de- 
stroyed the shanty. The ground was marked up by its 
tracks, and on leaving the camp it had gone along the 
soft earth by the brook, where the footprints were as 
plain as if on snow, and, after a careful scrutiny of the 
trail, it certainly did seem as if, whatever the thing was, 
it had walked off on but two legs. 

The men, thoroughly uneasy, gathered a great heap 
of dead logs, and kept up a roaring fire throughout the 
night, one or the other sitting on guard most of the 
time. About midnight the thing came down through 
the forest opposite, across the brook, and stayed there 
on the hillside for nearly an hour. They could hear the 
branches crackle as it moved about, and several times 
it uttered a harsh, grating, long-drawn moan, a pe- 
culiarly sinister sound. Yet it did not venture near 
the fire. 

In the morning the two trappers, after discussing the 
strange events of the last thirty-six hours, decided that 
they would shoulder their packs and leave the valley 
that afternoon. They were the more ready to do this 
because in spite of seeing a good deal of game sign they 
had caught very little fur. However, it was necessary 
first to go along the fine of their traps and gather them, 
and this they started out to do. 

409 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

All the morning they kept together; picking up trap 
after trap, each one empty. On first leaving camp they 
had the disagreeable sensation of being followed. In 
the dense spruce thickets they occasionally heard a 
branch snap after they had passed; and now and then 
there were slight rustling noises among the small pines 
to one side of them. 

At noon they were back within a couple of miles of 
camp. In the high, bright sunlight their fears seemed 
absurd to the two armed men, accustomed as they were, 
through long years of lonely wandering in the wilder- 
ness, to face every kind of danger from man, brute, or 
element. There were still three beaver traps to collect 
from a little pond in a wide ravine near by. Bauman 
volunteered to gather these and bring them in, while 
his companion went ahead to camp to make ready the 

packs. 

On reaching the pond Bauman found three beaver 
in the traps, one of which had been pulled loose and 
carried into a beaver house. He took several hours in 
securing and preparing the beaver, and when he started 
homeward he marked with some uneasiness how low 
the sun was getting. As he hurried toward camp, under 
the tall trees, the silence and desolation of the forest 
weighed on him. His feet made no sound on the pine- 
needles, and the slanting sun-rays, striking through 
among the straight trunks, made a gray twilight in 
which objects at a distance glimmered indistinctly. 
There was nothing to break the ghostly stillness which, 
when there is no breeze, always broods over these 
sombre primeval forests. 

At last he came to the edge of the little glade where 
the camp lay, and shouted as he approached it, but 
got no answer. The camp-fire had gone out, though 

410 



IN COWBOY LAND 

the thin blue smoke was still curling upward. Near 
it lay the packs, wrapped and arranged. At first 
Bauman could see nobody; nor did he receive an answer 
to his call. Stepping forward he again shouted, and as 
he did so his eye fell on the body of his friend, stretched 
beside the trunk of a great fallen spruce. Rushing 
toward it the horrified trapper found that the body was 
still warm, but that the neck was broken, while there 
were four great fang marks in the throat. 

The footprints of the unknown beast-creature, printed 
deep in the soft soil, told the whole story. 

The unfortunate man, having finished his packing, 
had sat down on the spruce log with his face to the fire, 
and his back to the dense woods, to wait for his com- 
panion. While thus waiting, his monstrous assailant, 
which must have been lurking near by in the woods, 
waiting for a chance to catch one of the adventurers 
unprepared, came silently up from behind, walking 
with long, noiseless steps, and seemingly still on two 
legs. Evidently unheard, it reached the man, and broke 
his neck by wrenching his head back with its fore paws, 
while it buried its teeth in his throat. It had not eaten 
the body, but apparently had romped and gambolled 
round it in uncouth, ferocious glee, occasionally rolling 
over and over it; and had then fled back into the sound- 
less depths of the woods. 

Bauman, utterly unnerved, and believing that the 
creature with which he had to deal was something 
either half human or half devil, some great goblin-beast, 
abandoned everything but his rifle and struck off at 
speed down the pass, not halting until he reached the 
beaver meadows where the hobbled ponies were still 
grazing. Mounting, he rode onward through the night 
until far beyond the reach of pursuit. 

411 



XXI 

HUNTING LORE 

It has been my good luck to kill every kind of game 
properly belonging to the United States: though one 
beast which I never had a chance to slay, the jaguar, 
from the torrid South, sometimes comes just across the 
Rio Grande; nor have I ever hunted the musk-ox and 
polar bear in the boreal wastes where they dwell, sur- 
rounded by the frozen desolation of the uttermost 
North. 

I have never sought to make large bags, for a hunter 
should not be a game-butcher. It is always lawful to 
kill dangerous or noxious animals, like the bear, cougar, 
and wolf; but other game should be shot only when 
there is need of the meat, or for the sake of an un- 
usually fine trophy. Killing a reasonable number of 
bulls, bucks, or rams does no harm whatever to the 
species; to slay half the males of any kind of game 
would not stop the natural increase, and they yield the 
best sport, and are the legitimate objects of the chase. 
Cows, does, and ewes, on the contrary, should only be 
killed (unless barren) in case of necessity; during my 
last five years' hunting I have killed but five — one by 
a mischance, and the other four for the table. 

From its very nature, the life of the hunter is in most 
places evanescent; and when it has vanished there can 
be no real substitute in old-settled coimtries. Shoot- 
ing in a private game-preserve is but a dismal parody; 
the manliest and healthiest features of the sport are 
lost with the change of conditions. We need, in the in- 
terest of the community at large, a rigid system of 

412 



HUNTING LORE 

game-laws rigidly enforced, and it is not only admis- 
sible, but one may almost say necessary, to establish, 
under the control of the State, great national forest 
reserves which shall also be breeding-grounds and nurs- 
eries for wild game; but I should much regret to see 
grow up in this country a system of large private game- 
preserves kept for the enjoyment of the very rich. One 
of the chief attractions of the life of the wilderness is its 
rugged and stalwart democracy; there every man stands 
for what he actually is and can show himself to be. 

There are, in different parts of our country, chances 
to try so many various kinds of hunting, with rifle or 
with horse and hound, that it is nearly impossible for 
one man to have experience of them all. There are 
many hunts I long hoped to take, but never did and 
never shall ; they must be left for men with more time, 
or for those whose homes are nearer to the hunting- 
grounds. I have never seen a grizzly roped by the 
riders of the plains, nor a black bear killed with the 
knife and hounds in the Southern cane-brakes; though 
at one time I had for many years a standing invitation 
to witness this last feat on a plantation in Arkansas. 
The friend who gave it, an old backwoods planter, at 
one time lost almost all his hogs by the numerous bears 
who infested his neighborhood. He took a grimly 
humorous revenge each fall by doing his winter killing 
among the bears instead of among the hogs they had 
slain; for as the cold weather approached he regularly 
proceeded to lay in a stock of bear bacon, scouring the 
cane-brakes in a series of systematic hunts, bringing 
the quarry to bay with the help of a big pack of hard- 
fighting mongrels, and then killing it with his long, 
broad-bladed bowie. 

Again, I should like to make a trial at killing peccaries 

413 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

with the spear, whether on foot or on horseback, and 
with or without dogs. I should Hke much to repeat 
the experience of a friend who cruised northward 
through Bering Sea, shooting walrus and polar bear; 
and that of two other friends who travelled with dog- 
sleds to the Barren Grounds, in chase of the caribou, 
and of that last survivor of the Ice Age, the strange 
musk-ox. Once in a while it must be good sport to 
shoot alligators by torchlight in the everglades of 
Florida or the bayous of Louisiana. 

If the big-game hunter, the lover of the rifle, has a 
taste for kindred field-sports with rod and shotgun, 
many are his chances for pleasure, though perhaps of 
a less intense kind. The wild turkey really deserves 
a place beside the deer; to kill a wary old gobbler with 
the small-bore rifle, by fair still-hunting, is a triumph 
for the best sportsman. Swans, geese, and sand-hill 
cranes likewise may sometimes be killed with the rifle; 
but more often all three, save perhaps the swan, must 
be shot over decoys. Then there is prairie-chicken- 
shooting on the fertile grain prairies of the Middle 
West, from Minnesota to Texas; and killing canvas- 
backs from behind blinds, with the help of that fearless 
swimmer, the Chesapeake Bay dog. In Californian 
mountains and valleys live the beautiful plumed quails; 
and who does not know their cousin bob-white, the 
bird of the farm, with his cheery voice and friendly 
ways? For pure fun, nothing can surpass a night 
scramble through the woods after coon and possum. 

The salmon, whether near Puget Sound or the St. 
Lawrence, is the royal fish; his only rival is the giant 
of the warm Gulf waters, the silver-mailed tarpon; 
while along the Atlantic coast the great striped bass 
likewise yields fine sport to the men of rod and reel. 

414 



HUNTING LORE 

Every hunter of the mountains and the northern woods 
knows the many kinds of spotted trout; for the black 
bass he cares less; and least of all for the sluggish 
pickerel, and his big brother of the Great Lakes, the 
muskallonge. 

Yet the sport yielded by rod and smooth-bore is 
really less closely kin to the strong pleasures so beloved 
by the hunter who trusts in horse and rifle than are 
certain other outdoor pastimes of the rougher and 
hardier kind. Such a pastime is snow-shoeing, whether 
with webbed rackets in the vast northern forests or 
with skis on the bare slopes of the Rockies. Such is 
mountaineering, especially when joined with bold ex- 
ploration of the unknown. Most of our mountains are 
of rounded shape, and though climbing them is often 
hard work, it is rarely difficult or dangerous, save in bad 
weather or after a snowfall. But there are many of 
which this is not true; the Tetons, for instance, and 
various glacier-bearing peaks in the Northwest; while 
the lofty, snow-clad ranges of British Columbia and 
Alaska offer one of the finest fields in the world for the 
daring cragsman. Mountaineering is among the man- 
liest of sports; and it is to be hoped that some of our 
young men with a taste for hard work and adventure 
among the high hills will attempt the conquest of these 
great untrodden mountains of their own continent. As 
with all pioneer work, there would be far more discom- 
fort and danger, far more need to display resolution, 
hardihood, and wisdom in such an attempt than in any 
expedition on well-known and historic ground like the 
Swiss Alps; but the victory would be a hundredfold 
better worth winning. 

The dweller or sojourner in the wilderness who most 
keenly loves and appreciates his wild surroundings, and 

415 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

all their sights and sounds, is the man who also loves 
and appreciates the books which tell of them. 

Foremost of all American writers on outdoor life is 
John Burroughs; and I can scarcely suppose that any 
man who cares for existence outside the cities would 
willingly be without anything that he has ever written. 
To the naturalist, to the observer and lover of nature, 
he is of course worth many times more than any closet 
systematist; and though he has not been very much 
in really wild regions, his pages so thrill with the sights 
and sounds of outdoor life that nothing by any writer 
who is a mere professional scientist or a mere profes- 
sional hunter can take their place or do more than 
supplement them — for scientist and hunter alike would 
do well to remember that before a book can take the 
highest rank in any particular line it must also rank 
high in literature proper. Of course for us Americans 
Burroughs has a peculiar charm that he cannot have 
for others, no matter how much they too may like him; 
for what he writes of is our own, and he calls to our 
minds memories and associations that are very dear. 
His books make us homesick when we read them in 
foreign lands; for they spring from our soil as truly as 
''Snowbound" or "The Biglow Papers."* 

As a woodland writer, Thoreau comes second only 
to Burroughs. 

For natural history in the narrower sense there are 

* I am under many obligations to the writings of Mr. Burroughs (though there 
are one or two of his theories from which I should dissent) ; and there is a piece of 
indebtedness in this very volume of which I have only just become aware. In 
my chapter on the prongbuck there is a paragraph which will at once suggest 
to any lover of Burroughs some sentences in his essay on "Birds and Poets." 
I did not notice the resemblance until happening to reread the essay after my 
own chapter was written, and at the time I had no idea that I was borrowing 
from anybody, the more so as I was thinking purely of Western wilderness life 
and Western wilderness game, with which I knew Mr. Burroughs had never been 
familiar. I have concluded to leave the paragraph in, with this acknowledgment. 

416 



HUNTING LORE 

still no better books than Audubon and Bachman's 
"Mammals" and Audubon's "Birds." There are also 
good works by men like Coues and Bendire; and if 
Hart Merriam, of the Smithsonian, will only do for the 
mammals of the United States what he has already 
done for those of the Adirondacks, we shall have the 
best book of its kind in existence. Nor, among less 
technical writings, should one overlook such essays as 
those of Maurice Thompson and Olive Thorne Miller. 

There have been many American hunting books ; but 
too often they have been very worthless, even when the 
writers possessed the necessary first-hand knowledge 
and the rare capacity of seeing the truth. Few of the 
old-time hunters ever tried to write of what they had 
seen and done; and of those who made the effort fewer 
still succeeded. Innate refinement and the literary 
faculty — that is, the faculty of writing a thoroughly 
interesting book, full of valuable information — may 
exist in uneducated people; but if they do not, no 
amount of experience in the field can supply their lack. 
However, we have had some good works on the chase 
and habits of big game, such as Caton's "Deer and 
Antelope of America," Van Dyke's "Still Hunter," 
Elliott's "Carolina Sports," and Dodge's "Hunting 
Grounds of the Great West," besides the Century Com- 
pany's "Sport with Rod and Gun." Then there is 
Catlin's book, and the journals of the explorers from 
Lewis and Clark down; and occasional volumes on 
outdoor life, such as Theodore Winthrop's "Canoe and 
Saddle," and Clarence King's "Mountaineering in the 
Sierra Nevada." 

Two or three of the great writers of American litera- 
ture, notably Parkman in his "Oregon Trail," and, with 
less interest, Irving in his "Trip on the Prairies," have 

417 



THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

written with power and charm of Hfe in the American 
wilderness; but no one has arisen to do for the 
far Western plainsman and Rocky Mountain trappers 
quite what Hermann Melville did for the South Sea 
whaling folk in "Omoo" and ''Moby Dick." The best 
description of these old-time dwellers among the moun- 
tains and on the plains is to be found in a couple of 
good volumes by the Englishman Ruxton. However, 
the backwoodsmen proper, both in their forest homes 
and when they first began to venture out on the prairie, 
have been portrayed by a master hand. In a succession 
of wonderfully drawn characters, ranging from Aaron 
Thousandacres and Ishmael Bush, Fenimore Cooper 
has preserved for always the likenesses of these stark 
pioneer settlers and backwoods hunters; uncouth, nar- 
row, hard, suspicious, but with all the virile virtues of 
a young and masterful race, a race of mighty breeders, 
mighty fighters, mighty commonwealth builders. As for 
Leatherstocking, he is one of the undying men of story; 
grand, simple, kindly, pure-minded, stanchly loyal, the 
type of the steel-thewed and iron-willed hunter-warrior. 

Turning from the men of fiction to the men of real 
life, it is worth noting how many of the leaders among 
our statesmen and soldiers have sought strength and 
pleasure in the chase or in kindred vigorous pastimes. 
Of course field-sports, or at least the wilder kinds, which 
entail the exercise of daring, and the endurance of toil 
and hardship, and which lead men afar into the forests 
and mountains, stand above athletic exercises; ex- 
actly as among the latter, rugged outdoor games, like 
football and lacrosse, are much superior to mere 
gymnastics and calisthenics. 

With a few exceptions the men among us who have 
stood foremost in political leadership, like their fellows 

418 



HUNTING LORE 

who have led our armies, have been of stalwart frame 
and sound bodily health. \^Tien they sprang from the 
frontier folk, as did Lincoln and Andrew Jackson, they 
usually hunted much in their youth, if only as an in- 
cident in the prolonged warfare waged by themselves 
and their kinsmen against the wild forces of nature. Old 
Israel Putnam's famous wolf-killing feat comes strictly 
under this head. Doubtless he greatly enjoyed the 
excitement of the adventure; but he went into it as a 
matter of business, not of sport. The wolf, the last of 
its kind in his neighborhood, had taken heavy toll of 
the flocks of himself and his friends; when they found 
the deep cave in which it had made its den it readily 
beat off the dogs sent in to assail it; and so Putnam 
crept in himself, with his torch and his flint-lock musket, 
and shot the beast where it lay. 

When such men lived in long-settled and thickly 
peopled regions, they needs had to accommodate them- 
selves to the conditions and put up with humbler forms 
of sport. Webster, like his great rival for Whig leader- 
ship, Henry Clay, cared much for horses, dogs, and guns; 
but though an outdoor man he had no chance to develop 
a love for big-game hunting. He was, however, very 
fond of the rod and shotgun. Mr. Cabot Lodge recently 
handed me a letter written to his grandfather by Web- 
ster, and describing a day's trout-fishing. It may be 
worth giving for the sake of the writer, and because of 
the fine heartiness and zest in enjoyment which it shows : 

Sandwich, June 4, 

Saturday mor'g 

■TV a 6 o'clock 

Dear Sir: 

I send you eight or nine trout, which I took yesterday, 

in that chief of all brooks, Mashpee. I made a long day 

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of it, and with good success, for me. John was with me, 
full of good advice, but did not fish — nor carry a rod. 

I took 26 trouts, all weighing 
The largest (you have him) 

weighed at Crokers 
The 5 largest 
The eight largest 

I got these by following your advice; that is, by care- 
ful & thorough fishing of the difficult places, which others 
do not fish. The brook is fished, nearly every day. I 
entered it, not so high up as we sometimes do, between 
7 & 8 o'clock, & at 12 was hardly more than half way 
down to the meeting-house path. You see I did not 
hurry. The day did not hold out to fish the whole brook 
properly. The largest trout I took at 3 p. m. (you see 
I am precise) below the meeting-house, under a bush on 
the right bank, two or three rods below the large beeches. 
It is singular, that in the whole day, I did not take two 
trouts out of the same hole. I found both ends, or parts 
of the Brook about equally productive. Small fish not 
plenty, in either. So many hooks get everything which 
is not hid away in the manner large trouts take care of 
themselves. I hooked one, which I suppose to be larger 
than any which I took, as he broke my line, by fair 
pulling, after I had pulled him out of his den, & was 
playing him in fair open water. 

Of what I send you, I pray you keep what you wish 
yourself, send three to Mr. Ticknor, & three to Dr. 
Warren; or two of the larger ones, to each will perhaps 
be enough — & if there be any left, there is Mr. Callender 
& Mr. Blake, & Mr. Davis, either of them not "averse 
to fish." Pray let Mr. Davis see them — especially the 

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HUNTING LORE 

large one. — As he promised to come, & fell back, I desire 
to excite his regrets. I hope you will have the large one 
on your own table. 

The day was fine — not another hook in the Brook. 
John steady as a judge — and everything else exactly 
right. I never, on the whole, had so agreeable a day's 
fishing tho' the result, in pounds or numbers, is not 
great; — nor ever expect such another. 

Please preserve this letter; but rehearse not these 
particulars to the uninitiated. 

I think the Limerick not the best hook. AVhether it 
pricks too soon, or for what other reason, I found or 
thought I found the fish more likely to let go his hold, 
from this, than from the old-fashioned hook. 

D. Webster. 
H. Cabot, Esq. 

The greatest of Americans, Washington, was very 
fond of hunting, both with rifle and fowling-piece, and 
especially with horse, horn, and hound. Essentially the 
representative of all that is best in our national life, 
standing high as a general, high as a statesman, and 
highest of all as a man, he could never have been what 
he was had he not taken delight in feats of hardihood, of 
daring, and of bodily prowess. He was strongly drawn 
to those field-sports which demand in their follower the 
exercise of the manly virtues — courage, endurance, 
physical address. As a young man, clad in the dis- 
tinctive garb of the backwoodsman, the fringed and 
tasselled hunting-shirt, he led the life of a frontier sur- 
veyor; and like his fellow adventurers in wilderness 
exploration and Indian campaigning, he was often 
forced to trust to the long rifle for keeping his party in 

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THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

food. ^Mien at his home at Mount Vernon he hunted 
from simple dehght in the sport. 

His manuscript diaries, preserved in the State De- 
partment at Washington, are full of entries concerning 
his feats in the chase; almost all of them naturally 
falling in the years between the ending of the French 
war and the opening of the Revolutionary struggle 
against the British, or else in the period separating his 
service as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental 
Armies from his term of office as President of the Re- 
public. These entries are scattered through others 
dealing with his daily duties in overseeing his farm 
and mill, his attendance at the Virginia House of Bur- 
gesses, his journeys, the drill of the local militia, and 
all the various interests of his many-sided life. Fond 
though he was of hunting, he was wholly incapable of 
the career of inanity led by those who make sport, not 
a manly pastime, but the one serious business of their 
lives. 

The entries in the diaries are short, and are couched 
in the homely, vigorous English so familiar to the readers 
of Washington's journals and private letters. Some- 
times they are brief jottings in reference to shooting 
trips; such as: "Rid out with my gun"; "went pheasant 
hunting"; "went ducking," and "went a-gunning up 
the Creek." But far more often they are: "Rid out 
with my hounds," "went a fox hunting," or "went a 
hunting." In their perfect simplicity and good faith 
they are strongly characteristic of the man. He enters 
his blank days and failures as conscientiously as his 
red-letter days of success: recording with equal care 
on one day, "Fox hunting with Captain Posey — catch 
a Fox," and another, "Went a hunting with Lord 
Fairfax . . . catched nothing." 

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HUNTING LORE 

Occasionally he began as early as August and con- 
tinued until April; and while he sometimes made but 
eight or ten hunts in a season, at others he made as 
many in a month. Often he hunted from Mount 
Vernon, going out once or twice a week, either alone 
or with a party of his friends and neighbors ; and again 
he would meet with these same neighbors at one of their 
houses, and devote several days solely to the chase. 
The country was still very wild, and now and then game 
was encountered with which the foxhounds proved un- 
able to cope; as witness entries like: "found both a Bear 
and a Fox, but got neither"; "went a hunting . . . 
started a Deer & then a Fox but got neither"; and 
"Went a hunting and after trailing a fox a good while 
the Dogs raized a Deer & ran out of the Neck with it 
& did not some of them at least come home till the next 
day." If it was a small animal, however, it was soon 
accounted for. "Went a Hunting . . . catched a 
Rakoon but never found a fox." 

The woods were so dense and continuous that it was 
often impossible for the riders to keep close to the 
hounds throughout the run; though in one or two of 
the best covers, as the journal records, Washington 
"directed paths to be cut for Fox Hunting." This 
thickness of the timber made it diflScult to keep the 
hounds always under control; and there are frequent 
allusions to their going off on their own account, as 
"Joined some dogs that were self hunting." Sometimes 
the hounds got so far away that it was impossible 
to tell whether they had killed or not, the journal re- 
marking "catched nothing that we knew of," or "found 
a fox at the head of the blind Pocoson which we suppose 
was killed in an hour but could not find it." 

Another result of this density and continuity of cover 

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THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

was the frequent recurrence of days of ill success. 
There are many such entries as: "Went Fox hunting, 
but started nothing"; "Went a hunting, but catched 
nothing"; "found nothing"; "found a Fox and lost 
it." Often failure followed long and hard runs: 
"Started a Fox, run him four hours, took the Hounds 
off at night"; "found a Fox and run it 6 hours and 
then lost"; "Went a hunting above Darrells . . . 
found a fox by two dogs but lost it upon joining the 
Pack." In the season of 1772-73 Washington hunted 
eighteen days and killed nine foxes; and though there 
were seasons when he was out much more often, this 
proportion of kills to runs was if anything above the 
average. At the beginning of 1768 he met with a 
series of blank days which might well have daunted a 
less patient and persevering hunter. In January and the 
early part of February he was out nine times without 
getting a thing; but this diary does not contain a word 
of disappointment or surprise, each successive piece of 
ill luck being entered without comment, even when" one 
day he met some more fortunate friends "who had 
just catched 2 foxes." At last, on February 12, he 
himself "catched two foxes"; the six or eight gentle- 
men of the neighborhood who made up the field all 
went home with him to Mount Vernon, to dine and 
pass the night, and in the hunt of the following day 
they repeated the feat of a double score. In the next 
seven days' hunting he killed four times. 

The runs of course varied greatly in length; on one 
day he "found a bitch fox at Piney Branch and killed 
it in an hour"; on another he "killed a Dog fox after 
having him on foot three hours & hard running an hour 
and a qr."; and on yet another he "catched a fox with 
a bobd Tail & cut ears after 7 hours chase in which 

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HUNTING LORE 

most of the Dogs were worsted." Sometimes he caught 
his fox in thirty-five minutes, and again he might run 
it nearly the whole day in vain; the average run seems 
to have been from an hour and a half to three hours. 
Sometimes the entry records merely the barren fact of 
the run; at others a few particulars are given, with 
homespun, telling directness, as: "Went a hunting 
with Jacky Custis and catched a Bitch Fox after three 
hours chase — founded it on ye. ck. by I. Soals"; or 
"went a Fox hunting with Lund Washington — took 
the drag of a fox by Isaac Gates & carrd. it tolerably 
well to the old Glebe then touched now and then upon 
a cold scent till we came into Col. Fairfaxes Neck where 
we found about half after three upon the Hills just 
above Accotinck Creek — after running till quite Dark 
took off the dogs and came home." 

The foxes were doubtless mostly of the gray kind, 
and besides going to holes they treed readily. In 
January, 1770, he was out seven days, killing four 
foxes; and two of the entries in the journal relate to 
foxes which treed; one, on the 10th, being, "I went a 
hunting in the Neck and visited the plantn. there found 
and killed a bitch fox after treeing it 3 t. chasg. it abt. 
3 hrs.," and the other, on the 23d: "Went a hunting 
after breakfast & found a Fox at muddy hole & killed 
her (it being a bitch) after a chase of better than two 
hours and after treeing her twice the last of which times 
she fell dead out of the Tree after being therein sevl. 
minutes apparently." In April, 1769, he hunted four 
days, and on every occasion the fox treed. April 7, 
"Dog fox killed, ran an hour & treed twice." April 
11, "Went a fox hunting and took a fox alive after 
running him to a Tree — brot him home." April 12, 
"Chased the above fox an hour & 45 minutes when he 

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THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

treed again after which we lost him." April 13, *' Killed 
a dog fox after treeing him in 35 minutes." 

Washington continued his fox-hunting until, in the 
spring of 1775, the guns of the minutemen in Massa- 
chusetts called him to the command of the Revolution- 
ary soldiery. When the eight weary years of cam- 
paigning were over, he said good-by to the war-worn 
veterans whom he had led through defeat and disaster 
to ultimate triumph, and became once more a Virginia 
country gentleman. Then he took up his fox-hunting 
with as much zest as ever. The entries in his journal 
are now rather longer, and go more into detail than 
formerly. Thus, on December 12, 1785, he writes that 
after an early breakfast he went on a hunt and found 
a fox at half after ten, *' being first plagued with the 
dogs running hogs," followed on his drag for some 
time, then ran him hard for an hour, when there came 
a fault; but when four dogs which had been thrown 
out rejoined the pack they put the fox up afresh, and 
after fifty minutes' run killed him in an open field, 
"every Rider & every Dog being present at the Death." 
With his usual alternations between days like this and 
days of ill luck, he hunted steadily every season until 
his term of private life again drew to a close and he 
was called to the headship of the nation he had so 
largely helped to found. 

In a certain kind of fox-hunting lore there is much 
reference to a Warwickshire squire who, when the 
Parliamentary and Royalist armies were forming for 
the battle at Edgehill, was discovered between the 
hostile lines, unmovedly drawing the covers for a fox. 
Now, this placid sportsman should by rights have been 
slain offhand by the first trooper who reached him, 
whether Cavalier or Roundhead. He had mistaken 

426 



HUNTING LORE 

means for ends, he had confounded the healthful play 
which should fit a man for needful work with the work 
itself; and mistakes of this kind are sometimes criminal. 
Hardy sports of the field offer the best possible training 
for war; but they become contemptible when indulged 
in while the nation is at death-grips with her enemies. 

It was not in Washington's strong nature to make 
such an error. Nor yet, on the other hand, was he 
likely to undervalue either the pleasure or the real 
worth of outdoor sports. The qualities of heart, mind, 
and body which made him delight in the hunting-field, 
and which he there exercised and developed, stood him 
in good stead in many a long campaign and on many a 
stricken field; they helped to build that stern capacity 
for leadership in war which he showed alike through 
the bitter woe of the winter at Valley Forge, on the 
night when he ferried his men across the half-frozen 
Delaware to the overthrow of the German mercenaries 
at Trenton, and in the brilliant feat of arms whereof 
the outcome was the decisive victory of Yorktown. 



427 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 

In this volume I have avoided repeating what was 
contained in either of my former books, the "Hunting 
Trips of a Ranchman" and "Ranch Life and the 
Hunting Trail." For many details of life and work in 
the cattle country I must refer the reader to these two 
volumes; and also for more full accounts of the habits 
and methods of hunting such game as deer and ante- 
lope. As far as I know, the description in my "Ranch 
Life " of the habits and the chase of the mountain-sheep 
is the only moderately complete account thereof that 
has ever been published. The five game-heads figured 
in this volume are copied exactly from the originals, 
now in my home; the animals were, of course, shot by 
myself. 

There have been many changes, both in my old 
hunting-grounds and my old hunting friends, since I 
first followed the chase in the far Western country. 
Where the buffalo and the Indian ranged, along the 
Little Missouri, the branded herds of the ranchmen 
now graze; the scene of my elk-hunt at Two-Ocean 
Pass is now part of the National Forest Reserve; settlers 
and miners have invaded the ground where I killed 
bear and moose; and steamers ply on the lonely waters 
of Kootenai Lake. Of my hunting companions some 
are alive; others — among them my stanch and valued 
friend Will Dow and crabbed, surly old Hank Griffin 
— are dead; while yet others have drifted away, and I 
know not what has become of them. 

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APPENDIX 

I have made no effort to indicate the best kind of 
camp kit for hunting, for the excellent reason that it 
depends so much upon the kind of trip taken and upon 
the circumstances of the person taking it. The hunting 
trip may be made with a pack-train, or with a wagon, or 
with a canoe, or on foot; and the hunter may have 
half a dozen attendants, or he may go absolutely alone. 
I have myself made trips under all of these circum- 
stances. At times I have gone with two or three men, 
several tents, and an elaborate apparatus for cooking, 
cases of canned goods, and the like. On the other hand, 
I have made trips on horseback, with nothing what- 
soever beyond what I had on, save my oilskin slicker, 
a metal cup, and some hardtack, tea, and salt in the 
saddle pockets; and I have gone for a week or two's 
journey on foot, carrying on my shoulders my blanket, 
a frying-pan, some salt, a little flour, a small chunk of 
bacon, and a hatchet. So it is with dress. The clothes 
should be stout, of a neutral tint; the hat should be 
soft, without too large a brim; the shoes heavy, and the 
soles studded with small nails, save when moccasins or 
rubber-soled shoes are worn; but within these limits 
there is room for plenty of variation. Avoid, however, 
the so-called deer-stalker's cap, which is an abomination; 
its peaked brim giving no protection whatsoever to the 
eyes when facing the sun quartering, a position in which 
many shots must be taken. In very cold regions, fur 
coats, caps, and mittens, and all-wool underclothing are 
necessary. I dislike rubber boots when they can pos- 
sibly be avoided. In hunting in snow in the winter I 
use the so-called German socks and felt overshoes where 
possible. One winter I had an ermine cap made. It 
was very good for peeping over the snowy ridge crests 
when game was on the other side; but, except when 

432 



APPENDIX 

the entire landscape was snow-covered, it was an un- 
mitigated nuisance. In winter, webbed snow-shoes are 
used in the thick woods, and skis in the open country. 

There is an endless variety of opinion about rifles, 
and all that can be said with certainty is that any good 
modern rifle will do. It is the man behind the rifle that 
counts after the weapon has reached a certain stage 
of perfection. One of my friends invariably uses an 
old Government Springfield, a 45-caliber, with an ounce 
bullet. Another cares for nothing but the 40-90 Sharp's, 
a weapon for which I myself have much partiality. 
Another uses always the old 45-caliber Sharp's, and 
yet another the 45-caliber Remington. Two of the 
best bear and elk hunters I know prefer the 32 and 
38 caliber Marlin's with long cartridges, weapons with 
which I myself would not undertake to produce any 
good results. Yet others prefer pieces of very large 
caliber. 

The amount of it is that each one of these guns pos- 
sesses some excellence which the others lack, but which 
is in most cases atoned for by some corresponding defect. 
Simplicity of mechanism is very important, but so is 
rapidity of fire; and it is hard to get both of them 
developed to the highest degree in the same piece. In 
the same way, flatness of trajectory, penetration, range, 
shock, and accuracy are all qualities which must be 
attained; but to get one in perfection usually means 
the sacrifice of some of the rest. For instance, other 
things being equal, the smallest caliber has the greatest 
penetration, but gives the least shock; while a very 
flat trajectory, if acquired by heavy charges of powder, 
means the sacrifice of accuracy. Similarly, solid and 
hollow pointed bullets have, respectively, their merits 
and demerits. There is no use of dogmatizing about 

433 



APPENDIX 

weapons. Some which prove excellent for particular 
countries and kinds of hunting are useless in others. 

There seems to be no doubt, judging from the testi- 
mony of sportsmen in South Africa and in India, that 
very heavy caliber double-barrelled rifles are best for 
use in the dense jungles and against the thick-hided 
game of those regions; but they are of very little value 
with us. In 1882, one of the buffalo-hunters on the 
Little Missouri obtained from some Englishman a 
double-barrelled 10-bore rifle of the kind used against 
rhinoceros, buffalo, and elephant in the Old World; 
but it proved very inferior to the 40 and 45 caliber 
Sharp's buffalo guns when used under the conditions 
of American buffalo-hunting, the tremendous shock 
given by the bullet not compensating for the gun's 
great relative deficiency in range and accuracy, while 
even the penetration was inferior at ordinary distances. 
It is largely also a matter of individual taste. At one 
time I possessed a very expensive double-barrelled 500 
Express, by one of the crack English makers; but I 
never liked the gun, and could not do as well with it as 
with my repeater, which cost barely a sixth as much. 
So one day I handed it to a Scotch friend, who was 
manifestly ill at ease with a Winchester exactly like 
my own. He took to the double-barrel as naturally as 
I did to the repeater, and did excellent work with it. 
Personally, I have always preferred the Winchester. 
I now use a 45-90, with my old buffalo gun, a 40-90 
Sharp's, as spare rifle. Both, of course, have specially 
tested barrels, and are stocked and sighted to suit my- 
self. 



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